Tony Beall is a PhD candidate in the History of Religions at
the University of Chicago, Divinity School. His research studies religion,
memory, and colonial history in Namibia, focusing on the okuruuo, the ancestral
fire kept at OvaHerero and OvaHimba homesteads and lit at commemorations. His
dissertation asks how communities confer with their ancestors at the fire to
authorize leadership, hold together religious identites, and validate
historical claims after the 1904 to 1908 genocide. He has worked in Namibia
since 2017, when he taught English at Evululuko Senior Secondary School in
Oshakati. He is also Founder and President of the Etanga Development Foundation
USA, a 501(c)(3) that works with the OvaHimba community of
Etanga, in Namibia's Kunene region, to pay children's school fees, provide
dry-season food, rebuild livestock herds, and restore a community center (https://www.etangadevelopmentfoundation.org).