Books by Barbara Pringle

Diplomatic service at its best mixes adventure with duty, bestows education through service, and makes friends out of employees.On the front cover, Bob is on his first trip to Timbuktu in his capacity as US Ambassador to Mali. With him are Sékou, his driver en brousse as well as in the country's capital, Gaoussou, a senior embassy employee who accompanied Bob on official visits all over the country, and Barbara. Those grooves in the sand were, in the late 1980s, the most direct route north, which lay between the Niger, West Africa's greatest river, and the vast Sahara: "Just stay between the river and the scraggly line of telegraph poles and you will get there," we were told. And we did.The black rhino (below) is a rare and hard to see species. We surprised her, and vice-versa, in one of South Africa's less visited game parks as she was finishing breakfast and we were returning from a visit to the US Consulate in Durban. Our assignment to South Africa, immediately after the end of apartheid, was an unforgettable end to our joint career as a diplomatic couple.

In Friendly Fires, Volumes I and II, Bob and Barbara Pringle describe their lives during Bob's assignments to six US Embassies in Asia and Africa over three decades. In addition to pre-Foreign Service PhD research in Sarawak, Malaysia, these volumes cover tours in Indonesia, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Papua New Guinea (plus Solomon Islands and Vanuatu), Mali (where Bob was the US Ambassador) and South Africa. Their story makes the case that although accompanying spouses, whether wife or husband, are not paid, their partnership adds an invaluable, underrated component to US diplomacy.The Pringles explain in detail how such a partnership works. Different in temperament and skills, they complemented each other in learning about the countries where they lived and building bridges to new friends from all walks of life. Despite dangers and discomforts the family encountered throughout the years-planes making flat landings, spiders in hotel rooms, thick blowing dust as a third element, and bouts of malaria-luck played its fickle part, and coups d'état and serious health issues missed them. With their two children, they enjoyed their diplomatic years, and the memories they gained were for life.