Raconteuse: Stories by Posie Beam

By Ms. Posie Beam

When I was a girl, I loved reading about exotic far away places, and I loved animals. As a teenager, I was lucky enough to have a horse, a golden palomino named Dagmar. After graduation from college, I took a job in Washington, where I met a Foreign Service Officer whose work required living in exotic far away places. We married in 1967 and went to Morocco, an exotic land where horses are inseparable from its history and culture. And then, there's the ram who strolled out of the mysterious Sale' market and hitched a ride in my VW bug.

Two unusual bucket list items were checked off in Mongolia. First was to see Prezewalski's horses in the wild and the other was a meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In Burundi, we were sent into the jungle on a mission to explore a road through one of the wildest places in Africa. Our house in Bujumbura was also pretty wild, being that it was haunted by the ghost of a murdered Prince. As diplomats, did we go too far when we entertained a couple of surprise guests who sat right on the table and ate a banana?

A conflict between two tribes in Burundi led to terror and a dramatic rescue of a teenage girl.

Then, there was an unplanned walk through the National Zoo at night in the winter and a chorus of "roar barks" to tingle my spine.

Our travels in France left us with questions, some of which have not been answered. Does magic really exist in the ancient salt marshes of the Camargue? Why are there a hundred ponies in Paris? And is there a place where one can believe in "peace on earth?"

During the twenty years we served in the Foreign Service, I wrote letters home documenting our lives and recounting stories about everything that tickled my fancy from the dramatic to the ridiculous. Some of the stories are more than fifty years old, but because I wrote them down at the time, they are probably pretty close to the truth. Since they are meant to be entertaining rather than scholarly, I did not do any real research but relied mostly on what I had learned just by being there. Times have changed a lot in fifty years and I'd like to think these stories now have some historical value in addition to the fun.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DZP21T34
• ISBN13: 9798985259162
• Release Date: December 2024
• Publisher: Travel Info Exchange, Inc.
• Length: 116 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"