Yuri Nesterenko From the notes of the African explorer (Editor's comment. This notes represents a memoirs about an expedition to Africa in 1911, where a new tribe was encountered, which was unknown for antropologists until now. In the beginning of 1912 author of this notes went to the U.S.A. apparently intending to make a report about his sensational discovery to his American colleagues. Alas, he choosed the Titanic for his voyage... Thus, only at present days this notes came to the scientists with the other things, raised from the deep. It's a pity that water destroyed much of the notes and that is why we don't know neither the geographical coordinates of this mysterious tribe, nor the name of this brave pioneer) Our way through the jungle lasted for seventeen days already and some of my comrades expressed the more and more greater concern. But Mbootoo, who was our local guide, walked ahead with an amazing self-confidence. He walked and walked forward, to the place in the heart of the rainforests where the unknown for us mysterious tribe Nterneti was hided. Eventually we reached the village on the ninth day early in the morning. It seemed that some kind of misfortune disturbes this village: it’s dwellers sat on the ground with a great depression on their faces or strolled one by one among the huts. From time to time one or another took the bare stick, with which the natives usually extract fire, and started to revolve it in the hole until the first smoke appears. However, instead of finishing this task of inflaming the fire, the nterneti looked sadly over the flying smoke and gone deep in his thoughts again staying motionless.. We asked Mbootoo to find out the reason of what have happen. "Ser Ver down", answered our guide. I thought that Ser Ver is the name of their local leader, who had fallen down the palm-tree, and gave the natives my sincere regrets. Then I curiously asked them about the meaning of this ritual. "They are sending pingoos", explained Mbootoo. From the further explanations I understood that pingoos are the devotions to the holy spirits, offered up to the healing of the Ser Ver. I smiled, when I heard about such a naive faith of this children of the forest, however, from behind of the trees I saw a column of thick black smoke rising up to the air just before the smile came off from my face. This smoke seems to be visible for a many miles away. And all of the Nterneti immediately started their happy shouts. "Ser Ver up!, Ser Ver up!" - shouts continued and they all set to extract their own smoke together. I have to abandon all further inquiries, because from that point they payed no attention neither on us, nor on the other events in the outside world. That circumstance made extremely difficulties for our studies, nevertheless, while living amongst this mysterious folk more than a month we put together all of the collected facts and formed some idea about their astonishing culture. The whole life of the Nterneti is attented to a very complicated religious cult. They devote themselves to the other things, including hunting and breeding, very seldom and reluctantly, believing that this distracts them from the main task. There are Connectoo as a good spirit and Disconnectoo as a bad spirit in the center of their cult. Connectoo can send nice weather and dry firewood, so the smoke ascends higher and is visible from a greater distance. Disconnectoo can inflict winds and rains that extinguishes the fires. They think that the terrestrial incarnation of the Connectoo spirit is Provida, the sovereign shaman who is maintaining the main fire of the tribe. Every Nterneti brings him a sacrifice each month - if not, he will "cut-off", as they explained. What exactly will cut Provida after such a disobedience, they didn't say - the execution must be too horrible to describe it aloud. Provida is so important link in the tribe that it's not allowed for simple Nterneti folk to see him. All givings they leave in front of his hut, which is covered by the skins of rhinoceroses. All problems they address to the servants of the shaman - soop-ports, so they serve as a communicators between Provida and the mortal men. As usually in the tribes with primitive cults people hides their real names, fearing those who know that names to get a witchy power over them - Nterneti tribe is not an exception. So in the everyday life they are using the name substitutes - the so-called "yurals"; but the true names ("ai-pee" in the native language) knows only the Provida. The way that simple Nterneti folk are extracting smokes is called "day-lar-paw"; perhaps, that name goes from palms which leaves are like big paws, because branches of those palms Nterneti people usually uses for setting up the smokes. However, Nterneti believes that most condign of them will get a special fuel after death, which is immune to the winds and rains and which produces smoke in many times greater. That's why it is called "dee-see-el", or Double Smoking Line. They say that some people are awarded with such a fuel in their lifetime, and the first candidate is the Provida himself, of course. It's true - the smoke of Provida is thicker than of any other members of the tribe. Though all tribes confess one common cult, they have some minor differences; however, it's enough for a constant religious wars. One of the longest wars is related to what kind of sticks to use for the smoke-extracting. One tribe is using msaiee sticks made of a coco palms and the other is using ntscay-pee sticks made of banana palms. It's interesting that all sticks are equally warped, however, each tribe notices the warp of the enemy sticks only. Besides religious opponents Nterneti has the other enemies. Once in the morning I left my tent and was terrified by the view - all the eastern part of the horizon was tighten by the the smoke. But the natives seemed not to be worried by this sight of a grandiose fire in the jungles, it caused just a vexatious irritation and no more than it: "It's spamee again!", explained them to me, dryly. Spamees are the outcasts, most despising part of the Nterneti tribe. They absolutely don't know how to hunt and so they makes a great number of fires asking to feed them with fruits of a breadfruit tree. It's absolutely incomprehensible to understand why they believe in the efficiency of those calls: if Nterneti manages to caught a spamee, they do not feed him, but punish him by torments and executions. A lot of dried spamees heads decorates the stakes around the Provida's hut. Those heads have a size of a fist of an adult men. I asked the natives about how can they reduce those heads in size so significantly, and they answerred that spamees have such heads by nature, 'cause they have a very little brain inside. But if the spamees are in common contempt, then the other variety of the violators of law of the tribe - hkrrs - causes the superstitious horror amongst the vast majority of the Nterneti. Hkrrs are the native wizards who are not assuming the power of Provida. Natives told me that they [hkrrs] could quench the fire at an impressive distance or could change it's smoke in such a way that it's owner surely wouldn't be happy. That's a pity that rain season came and we had to leave the village and to go back as well as not having heard many other secrets of the Nterneti tribe. But I'm looking forward to come back again with the next expedition. (Ñ) Yuri Nesterenko, 2001 http://yun.complife.ru (Translator's comment: This notes were first found as English text, but due to a strange chain of events it was once lost. We are lucky that somebody ;-) translated them into Russian and saved for the mankind. Now I took some work for restoring the original text) Translated by Yuri Lapitskiy, 2004 http://yuriybrisk.narod.ru/