Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-020
Mary Lou Weathers served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin from 1980 to 1983 as an English teacher. She later worked in the Human Resources Management office at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., from 1990 to 1997. In Benin, she first taught in Parakou in the northern part of the country, and then in Allada, a small agricultural town in the south. Weathers also was the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Coordinator for new volunteers and participated in other training in her third year. She talks about her teaching experience, including hiring a student to help him pay for tuition, and fundraising to build a library in Allada. She discusses the impact of tensions between the U.S. and Benin, including the withdrawal of Peace Corps volunteers before her time and the near evacuation of volunteers when a drunk U.S. Embassy contractor stormed a Benin military base. She also talks about the murder of a Peace Corps volunteer by a fellow teacher whom she reported as being abusive to women. Finally, Weathers comments on her work in the Peace Corps human resources office, including her term as HRM [Human Resource Management] Deputy Director and Director (1995-1996). She discusses the pros and cons of staff turnover on different parts of the agency due to the 5-year rule. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, September 20, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).