Year in South Africa inspires novel, lifelong friendships

In 2008, Harrisonburg small-business owner Marcus O’Malley (’04) traveled to South Africa on a one-way ticket. Hoping to make a difference in the lives of one, maybe two people, he flew to Cape Town, where he planned to stay for two weeks before heading to Durban on the opposite coast.

He never made it to Durban. A sudden influx of refugees from Zimbabwe to South Africa’s east coast, which limited housing availability, forced O’Malley to stay in Cape Town.

It was this experience that inspired his 2020 novel, Reunited, about three friends who travel to South Africa to honor a fourth friend. It was also there that O’Malley made some lifelong connections. “It was unbelievable,” he said. “I mean, I was only planning to be there two weeks.”

Through his church, he had arranged to spend that fortnight with Ursula Arendse, a tour guide with a son O’Malley’s age. When his living arrangements on the east coast became uncertain, she invited him to stay as long as he needed. Ultimately, he remained her guest for a year.

“We’ve stayed in touch over the years,” O’Malley said. “I was in Ireland last year. Her son has moved there, so we met up and surprised her on a video call. … Her son was like, ‘Hey, I got a surprise for you. I got a visitor from America.’”

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O’Malley, who started at JMU in the fall of 1999, was among the first to graduate from the new College of Integrated Science and Technology. East Campus had been a selling point for O’Malley, who hailed from Warrenton, Virginia. Before becoming a Duke, he had been considering the soccer programs at the University of Lynchburg in Virginia and Shepherd University in West Virginia, as well as pursuing a degree from Virginia Tech.

“It’s young, small and dynamic,” he recalled thinking of CISAT. “I think I just felt the energy of the new campus.” While studying Computer Science, he also sought out classes on West Campus.

“I love JMU’s diversity in education,” he said. “I did spend a lot of time on the Quad. I wanted that more well-rounded education. I think JMU grads are unique in that, and it helped me careerwise.”

In 2004, he and classmates Joshua Blake (’05) Justin Creasy (’05) and Kevin Ferrell (’05) competed in the first Windows ChallengE run by Microsoft Corp. Nearly 30 teams of three to four students and a faculty mentor at U.S. colleges and universities participated that year with a goal of using Windows CE to “Make the World a Safer Place.” JMU won the contest, led by O’Malley’s team and faculty advisor Dr. Ramon A. Mata-Toledo, professor of computer science.

Their winning project was a handheld airport-security checkpoint device that collects information from each passenger’s boarding pass and enables a chemical sniffer to sense and identify potential high-security threats posed by travelers or their luggage.

Winning the award helped JMU compete on the national stage with top tech schools, while inspiring O’Malley, Creasy, Blake and classmate William Roy (’03, ’05M) to start Immerge Technologies in Harrisonburg. Then, three years later, O’Malley embarked on a new journey.

A new convert to Christianity and a member of the Church of the Nazarene in Harrisonburg, O’Malley had a desire to live out his newfound faith and was seeking opportunities to make an impact in the community. While attending a speech by the Rev. Desmond Tutu at JMU on International Day of Peace in 2007, he felt called to respond.

The Anglican archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa, and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner was known for his work in ending apartheid. Tutu visited Madison to share the message “Goodness is Powerful” and receive the inaugural Mahatma Gandhi Global Nonviolence Award from JMU’s Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence. He was recognized for his exemplary contributions toward the improvement of human relations and to social, economic, and political transformation through the creative application of nonviolent methods.

O’Malley recalled Tutu sharing that about 60% of South African heads of household were age 16 or younger, because of the impact of HIV/AIDS and rampant drug use in their families. “That comment really struck me,” O’Malley said. “So many Americans want to give stuff — clothes, money. And [Tutu] said, ‘That’s great, and I appreciate it. But what South Africa really needs is leaders — adults speaking into young people’s lives.’”

Deciding he would take a year to try to help, O’Malley made his plan to go to South Africa. He sold his belongings and his stake in his tech company. The Church of the Nazarene helped him make contacts in South Africa so he could line up volunteer work and a place to live. He connected with a Catholic priest from his mother’s hometown in Ireland who had recently traveled there, and through his research he learned of various others who were volunteering in South African orphanages.

From April to September, his plan came together, and by Sept. 30, 2008, he was en route, first to Qatar and then to Cape Town. A blog he kept during his first three months shares how he planned to update technology for an organization in Durban. Instead, he spent a year helping Arendse and others with entrepreneurial work, like designing business cards, setting up social media for their businesses and building websites.

He also helped at orphanages in and around Cape Town, organized a youth soccer program and a weekly youth group, raised funding from friends and family back home, and otherwise lent a hand in an impoverished community that relied on the aid of people like O’Malley who came there to help.

O’Malley became trained to help with anti-drug and anti-gang work through Kerus Global Education, run by co-founder and Executive Director Dr. Marcia Ball, a tenured associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences at JMU from 1992 to 2000. O’Malley then helped train others around Cape Town to do the same. His efforts helped him talk down one of the local boys who brought a knife to a game of dominoes and attempted to kill another boy.

“I got to do some pretty unreal, lifechanging, impactful stuff for them and for me,” O’Malley said. “I just really felt like that’s where I needed to be. I knew there would be risk involved, but that’s life. I trusted the Lord’s protection and felt I could go anywhere.”

His work in the Mitchells Plain district of Cape Town also helped inspire neighbor Mymoena Pillay to go after a local drug lord. “She was very proud of that,” O’Malley recalled. “Not the inspiration I intended to have … [but] they ran him out of the neighborhood.”

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After returning home, O’Malley visited again in 2010 and 2014, and he’s stayed in touch with Cape Town residents through social media and video calls. Arendse, especially, has remained a good friend, and he recalled how she phoned to check on his ailing mother before her death in 2023.

O’Malley continues to see the world, having traveled with his wife to Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, in addition to his Ireland trip in 2024.

Now living in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife and three children, O’Malley has raised funds to build a local soccer pitch at Antioch Church where he is pastor for a soccer program for refugees from various countries. He also helps with a food pantry and community garden. This summer, he plans to lead a soccer tournament in Ecuador, and in the fall, he wants to build a soccer league of up to 10 multi-ethnic teams around Louisville.

Based on O’Malley’s time in Cape Town, Reunited is a Christian fiction story about four friends wrestling with their faith as they journey through South Africa.

Looking back, O’Malley says that his year in South Africa granted him perspective on other challenges he encounters in life.

“It really has empowered me to look through the lens of life exceptionally different,” he said. “There are probably many regrets in life. That year will never be one of them. It’s absolutely shaped and changed my life, and hopefully the lives of some of those folks over there as well.”