features March 11, 2011 13 Titan travels to Tonga, adapts to culture Nirali Dave CO-FEATURES EDITOR When John O’Malley, class of ‘04, graduated from South, nobody thought he would end up half-way across the world in the Kingdom of Tonga, an archipelago in the South Pacic. O’Malley began his journey after graduating from Illinois Wesleyan University in 2008 with a double major in history and biology. Initially, he planned on becoming a dentist but soon realized his dreams of traveling the world, backpacking across Europe for four months prior to joining the Peace Corps. According to O’Malley, he never expected to have joined the Peace Corps, and neither did his family. He applied his senior year of college, but due to medical clearance and other complications, he didn’t join the program until October 2009, with a 27-month commitment: three months with a host family and two years of work on the island of Ha’apai. “[My host family was] very nice to me and I learned Tongan really well in those three months,” he said. “It was studying in a class the rst half of the day, just going around town the second half […] To practice your Tongan.” At rst, he hoped to teach biology, but since there were no open positions, he taught English. “I was going to be a biology teacher at rst,” he explained. “There were not many openings. It was like one spot a year […] So they were going to make me wait. But then something happened where they had to switch me into a different program and postpone it for longer.” In the end, however, he was able to teach his passions of health and biology. Currently, he teaches two classes a day. “What the Peace Corps is good for, I think, [is] it gives you the independence to choose what you want to do,” he said. “I came in as an English teacher and I found a way to change that […] I like that I can do all the fun things I want to.” Taking this freedom into his own hands, O’Malley began teaching kids sex education with another volunteer, as it isn’t taught in Tongan schools. His hope is to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies by educating people about the topic. “We’re trying to teach kids s o m e sex ed because it’s not really taught here,” he said. “It’s a taboo subject: teachers don’t want to teach it, kids are embarrassed about it.” In order to teach Tongan natives, he contacted health teacher Michelle Scheinkopf and biology teacher Chris Hilvert this past winter to gather resources to take back. “Students here don’t get their own textbooks,” he explained. “They can’t afford it. There aren’t enough. There aren’t Tongan textbooks. So I use the textbook and have them look at it during class and photocopy things.” He also began another major project regarding healthy eating and oral hygiene. He receives money through a Peace Corps fund in order to go through workshops with a nurse, doctor and health promotion ofcer at the local hospital. He’s making posters, having radio broadcasts and is renting a boat for a week to spread the word to other islands, hoping to solve many prominent Tongan health issues. “Diabetes [is present] in almost 20 percent of the adult population here,” he began. “They’re obese [...] They love eating as much as they possibly can, and they’re eating a lot of canned imports with a lot of salt in there, so the blood pressure’s off the charts. There’s so much sugar in everything [...] They eat a lot of candy, a lot of junk food, so I’m trying to change that.” O’Malley enjoys how generous his neighbors are, bringing him food almost every night. However, he was not a fan of “Khole,” the Tongan word for borrowing, and the meaning behind it. There’s no understanding of bringing it back, and so people will borrow items with no expectation having them returned. “It’s a very communal culture […] I came with a lot of things that were my personal property, and that was a rude awakening moment when someone had come to borrow something,” he said. In addition, O’Malley explained that many times, his belongings would be “borrowed,” and after hunting down his belongings, they were often found broken. Now , he realizes he can’t get upset about it, especially when they help him so much. “When I think of all the countries I could’ve gone to, I didn’t pick Tonga, [Peace Corps] picked it for me,” O’Malley said. “I came to the perfect place for me because I realize now when I started how selsh I was.” He also had to deal with natural disasters such as earthquakes and cyclones. Last year, he e x p e r i e n c e d Cyclone Renee, and this year, Cyclone Wilma. “The door blew off of the house we were in,” he said. “My bed got soaked, a lot of trees fell down [and] we lost power for like a week. But then this year, while I was in the States for holiday, Cyclone Wilma came and it was really nasty... It ripped off part of the roof of the science building, which had just been renovated a month ago.” Another hardship he dealt with was stress management. “I don’t actually work that hard at teaching [...] But it’s like some days where you just want to go home and relax […],” O’Malley said. “Y ou can’t plan for a lot of the things that can come down on you, it’s like all of a sudden. Sometimes you just wish you could crawl up and take me back to where this was just a lot easier.” He found that partaking in Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts in high school prepared him for his journey. “If you can survive summer camp in the woods with Boy Scouts, it’s not so bad when you have cockroaches crawling on you at night, [...taking] cold showers […],” he said. “I do pretty good with time management, stress management, I think Boy Scouts helped with that.” After having ada pted to a year in Tonga, O’Malley found himself initially learning to be a teacher, but now plans to do more projects, get closer to his neighbors and relax more in his remaining year. As for the future, he hopes to do Peace Corps for shorter periods elsewhere, travel and eventually join the State Department as a foreign service ofcer, working at various embassies abroad. Throughout his experiences, though, O’Malley found himself more open- minded, feeling the effects of Tongan culture on his life. “How I’ve changed for the better is that I’m less selsh and I’m more easygoing,” he explained. “[I’m] more generous, and also I’m less anxious […] I think I’ve just calmed down a lot.” As for anyone considering joining Peace Corps, O’Malley explained, “Everyone’s experience is going to be different... When you don’t like what you’re doing you nd what you want to do [...] You have to be the type of person that’s open, with pretty much no expectations of what you’re going to get into.” To learn more about O’Malley and his travels, visit www. johnoutsidethelines. blogspot.com. PEACE, AMERICA: Above, John O’Malley, GBS ‘04 grad, celebrates a cultural festival with other volunteers and na- tive T ongans during hi s Peace Corps service . In his free time, O’Malley enjoys spea r shing, as it provides food,