In this week's episode of M-Net's Survivor South Africa: Malaysia, rural developer Hein Vosloo from Manzengwenya, Kwazulu-Natal, became the first Survivor contestant worldwide to make fire without using flint, matches or any sort of artificial firelighter.
This has not yet happened in any of the 14 American Survivor seasons to date, which are also screened on South African television. The same applies to the more than 100 international versions of the show, broadcast all over the world.
This fact was confirmed by M-Net.
After promising his tribe fire for almost a week, Hein surprised them by getting sparks flying using the time-honoured combination of rope and sticks.
Hein, who lived in the African bush for more than 20 years, previously told the castaways at camp Bajau that he knew seven different methods of making fire.
In the previous two episodes Hein's fellow contestants started to doubt his fire-making prowess. He blamed his unsuccessful attempts on the weather, but viewers also heard how he decided to hold back on providing for the tribe when Bajau turned against him and his friends by voting Nicola off at the previous tribal council.
In the reward challenge that cost Bajau the priceless flint, Iban took the honours when Bajau was disqualified.
Members of the two tribes had to wrestle each other one-on-one to manoeuvre a coconut over a finishing line, but instead of playing the coconut, as instructed, Nichal went for the man. He held on to his rival, Grant from Iban, preventing him from winning the game.
While Bajau was enjoying their camp fire, losing tribe Iban had to decide whose flame to extinguish at tribal council. Even though Lisa's name was mentioned at camp again, Grant swayed the members of Iban to dump candidate attorney Viwe Soga instead.
Viwe became the third person to be voted off Survivor South Africa: Malaysia. Viwe, who started fading away due to the lack of food, received five of the seven votes.
He clearly made a mistake when he decided to abandon the four-way alliance with Grant, Angie and Lisa and his poor performance at the immunity challenge sealed his fate.
As for Hein - his perilous position from last week seems a lot less perilous than it did before he made fire...and Survivor history.
I can remember somebody making fire using somebody elses glasses. But I could be wrong.
Reply from:
Lingo
9/6/2007 4:04:03 PM
Yeah, at least a few tribes have made fire with lenses, including, I think, one of the tribes on the very first season of US Survivor...I guess that counts as an "artificial firelighter" for the purposes of this article.
Reply from:
Luke
9/6/2007 4:44:42 PM
Well it's hardly an achievement to make fire with the lenses from spectacles - I was doing that at age 5 with my dad's glasses. It's definitely an artificial firelighter.
Hein did this with rope and stick, something many others have tried but which none have succeeded at.
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