Lake Rudolf is located in the north of Kenya. It has the island of Envaitenet, which in the language of the Elmolo tribe living on the shores of the lake means “irrevocable”. Local residents do not settle on this island, considering it a "cursed place". And I must say, they have certain reasons for that …
In 1935, an expedition headed by the British explorer V. Fush worked on the lake. Two of its members went to the island - M. Sheflis and B. Dyson. After a couple of days, they informed by light signals that everything was fine with them. This was the latest information received from the newly arrived islanders. When, on the 15th day, worried about the long absence of their comrades, three more members of the expedition went to the island, they did not find the slightest trace of their predecessors on the island. Sheflees and Dyson disappeared.
An airplane was called from Marsabit and flew around the island for two days. Then almost two hundred local residents, seduced by a huge reward, which Fush promised at least for some footprints of his comrades, literally turned every stone on the island. But even this time nothing was found.
Local residents told Fush a legend that once upon a time people settled on the island, fished, hunted, traded their goods with relatives living on the mainland. However, over time, they stopped showing up on the shore. Then a raft was sent from the coastal village of Loinglani to "reconnaissance". Those who arrived on the island were dumbfounded: they were awaited by a completely empty village with huts inside which things lay, fish decomposed by an extinct fire … Where did the people go? The envoys hastily left the island, not wanting to tempt fate any longer. Since then, no one has risked going there, except for the birds.
Over time, this story began to be forgotten, and several families of the Elmolo tribe settled on the island, fleeing here from the raids of their warlike nomadic neighbors. Elmolo successfully settled on the island, sometimes they brought fish to the coast, which they exchanged for skins and milk, sometimes they invited relatives to visit. But somehow the elmolo from the island did not appear on the shore for a long time, and then a raft was sent there from Loyengalani. The newcomers saw a completely empty village. Untouched things lay by the extinct fire, along with the remains of fish that had time to decompose. Where are the people - thirty villagers?
Again there is no trace, not even a hint, that would allow unraveling the reason for their disappearance … Abandoned huts have been standing on the shore for more than thirty years now, and no one wants to settle in them anymore. Irretrievable Island has become a haven for completely feral goats.
The first mention of the "enchanted island" and the people disappearing on it dates back to around 1630. Then several natives families also settled on the island, and among the fertile nature the village began to grow rapidly. True, the settlers were surprised by one circumstance: there were no animals and birds on the island. Only lush vegetation of some unusually bright emerald hue, heaps of smooth, as if polished, brown stones, which had a "tendency" to appear and disappear. And also … strange sounds that the islanders heard every new moon: eerie, chilling cries of either an animal or a person, turning into a drawn-out groan, which usually lasted from several minutes to an hour.
Over time, some parts of the island became inaccessible to people: the branches of the trees standing next to each other were tightly intertwined and became solid, like stone, forever blocking the entrance to some parts of the island. But the most frightening were the visions that the villagers visited at night with enviable frequency. They were bizarre creatures that vaguely resembled humans. After the visions, the islanders lay for hours as if in a coma, unable to move. The saddest thing is that after that, some of the natives necessarily suffered a misfortune: people became crippled, being injured literally from scratch, or even died altogether, being poisoned by fish, which they had eaten many times before; got blood poisoning from a minor cut or, being excellent swimmers, drowned in the waters of a completely calm lake.
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Over time, the inhabitants of the village began to feel that their island was inhabited by terrible monsters, not similar to any known animal and ready to devour them at any second. Monsters appeared right in front of a person at the most unexpected moment, and here everything was decided by how fast the native runs. However, several small children disappeared literally in front of their mothers, and it was not possible to find them.
Life in the once prosperous village was becoming unbearable, besides, its inhabitants found themselves in a kind of isolation: relatives from the coast, having heard about the strange events on the island, did not rush to visit them. And when, after several months, some worried Elmolo nevertheless sailed on rafts to the island, it turned out that the village was empty. However, nothing indicated signs of a struggle or an urgent departure of the inhabitants: bows and arrows were neatly stacked in the corner of each hut, clothes and dishes were also intact.
There is in local legends a mention of a mysterious fire spewing from a certain steep pipe on the island, covered with a “flapping lid”, and corridors leading deep into the bowels of the earth … There, according to legend, the giant Wat Usumu Tong Duurai lives there. …
And also, according to the stories of the Elmolo tribe, from time to time, right at the island, a city rises from the fog. It glows with different colors, like a rainbow of the night falling to the ground. Walls and towers rise above the night lake, amazing and multicolored, as if a handful of jewels thrown from the starry sky to the earth.
However, it is clearly seen that many amazing towers were destroyed, and only ruins remained of some of the palaces … It also seemed that some strange pulsating sound was heard from the city - a kind of funeral song rushing over the lake. The sound was sometimes soft and gentle, then it became furious and caused mental confusion.
After such visions, members of the tribe for a long time felt muscle pain, severe headache, aversion to food and a sharp decrease in vision. Pregnant women gave birth to freak babies who soon died, and their bodies, despite the tropical climate, were mummified in a matter of hours.
All these "miracles" for decades did not allow Elmolo to live in peace, and they were forced to move from the shores of the lake closer to the forest belt. At the end of the last century, hearing about the "cursed island", two private expeditions went there (from Holland and Germany), but both of them disappeared, leaving no traces behind. So the mystery of the island of Envaitenet remains unsolved for now …