On Wednesday night Survivor Elsie Smith was pulverised out of Malaysia after sending Mark into panic when she almost got trapped by the brute force of the new Bajau tribe at the end of the Immunity Challenge.
The re-shuffling of the tribes and their immediate loss of a member has left the new Iban crowd in a scrawny situation - here it is in case you don't remember who swapped where:
Iban:Irhsaad
Angie
Rijesh
Amanda
Dyke
Bajau:Angela
Hein
Mandla
Lisa
Lorette
Grant
Michelle
I caught up with Elsie for us yesterday to see how she's doing pain-wise and have a goss about Dyke obviously. Here's what she had to outwit, outsay, outscream:
Tashi: How are your injuries?
Elsie: They’re a lot better. They’ve healed very, very well but my finger sometimes, like once in a while, when somebody squeezes it just slightly too tight, it hurts.
Tashi: Do you think that your frustration at the tribes swapping was responsible for you getting hurt?
Elsie: No I don’t, I think it was merely because our team wasn’t strong enough physically because I mean we were all pushing with all our strength.
Tashi: Let’s talk about episode four - you committed every crime in the book in terms of how
not to win Survivor: you got upset about the tribes swapping, you told them you didn’t want to be with them and then you got hurt and went on about what a problem it was - obviously you were dying for them to vote you out.
Elsie: Not necessarily, no but I knew I’d put myself in a situation where I was most likely to be voted out. It was frustrating - I think the biggest impact on me being voted out was me being hurt.
I felt that because we were more original Bajau members in the new Iban team we were obviously going to vote off one of the Iban members and it wasn’t going to be Irhsaad because he was strong physically.
Tashi: Did you think: “Let me push through the injury, stick with the Bajau alliance and give it another three days”?
Elsie: I did at some point but at the same time I was in so much pain and you also have to think that you’re going to be on an island where you’re sleeping on the floor and I didn’t know how serious my injuries really were gonna be - I didn’t know if I was gonna need serious antibartics or if it was gonna get worse in the next two or three days.
Tashi: Now the fiasco that happened at Bajau - things went from war to peace - do you think Dyke’s racist as you said at Tribal Council?
Elsie: At Tribal Council I said, my exact words were: “I don’t really know what’s up with Dyke and the comments that he makes, maybe he’s racist or something?” The thing is I’m not God or Dyke’s mother and I’m not his best friend nor am I his girlfriend so I don’t really know him outside of Survivor.
It was just some of the comments he made, especially the “Women of colour, they can’t swim,” - that made feel or made me think: “Are you racist or do you just say these things? Are you just that way?” so I can’t call Dyke racsist, I can’t call him sexist, I can’t give him a label of any sort because I don’t know him outside of Survivor.
Tashi: Do you have racist issues?
Elsie: Impossible for me to have rascist issues - my background - I come from all sorts of colours, I’ve got white blood, I’ve got black blood, I am the mixed masella (laughs). I don’t call myself rascist, I’ve never considered myself to be a racist person, I spend a lot of time with white people and a lot of time with black people.
Tashi: As soon as these kind of issues come up we all always get so heated about them.
Elsie: It’s true hey and everyone’s got something to say. No Elsie’s racist, no Dyke’s racist, no Elsie’s racist, no Dyke’s racist. (laughs)
Tashi: What is it that got Bajau to a point of eventually pulling together and getting along the way you did?
Elsie: I think we just got to a point where we decided we where there to play a game and we really wanted to win as a tribe and keep on winning as a tribe and that if we didn’t push our differences aside and get along - not necessarily be buddy-buddy - but just get along for the sake of our tribe, then we weren’t gonna get anywhere as a tribe.
Tashi: Do you think that if you hadn’t had that blow-out at Tribal Council that that would have happened?
Elsie: Um I don’t know, maybe it would have, maybe it wouldn’t have happened - I’m just glad we had the blast that we had and everyone aired out their views and said how they felt - that also contributed because everyone knew what to say to each other and what not to say.
Tashi: Did the atmosphere change completely?
Elsie: It
completely changed.
Tashi: Would you do it all again?
Elsie: No I wouldn’t because I believe Survivor was a one-time experience. You can only experience it once to its full potential.
Tashi: If you hadn’t already done it?
Elsie: Yes I would enter again just to experience it - it was just such an experience, I can’t even explain it.
Tashi: What was the most difficult thing?
Elsie: There were so many where do I start?
Tashi: Top of your list.
Elsie: Wow - the sandfly bites. You can handle the island for a little while if there weren’t any sandflies because those sandfly bites just frustrated you and really irritated.
Tashi: So it was a physical thing and not social or emotional. You’re a very emotional person?
Elsie: Yes I am.
Tashi: If you were to do it again would you try to not be as emotional?
Elsie: I don’t think I would because that’s part of me - it would mean I’d go into Survivor and be somebody I’m not. Airing my views and being a loud mouth or motor mouth, that’s part of me.
Tashi: What was the funnest thing?
Elsie: When we started winning. When we won the fish - that was so cool, it was so much fun and it was also fun when we actually started getting along as a tribe and we’d go back to camp and we’d be laughing and smiling about what happened in the day.
Tashi: Who would you like to see win?
Elsie: I would personally like to see Rijesh, Amanda or Angela win. I know Rijesh is backstabbing and playing a game but that’s what he’s doing, playing a game to the best of his abilities as he knows it but at the same time I think that Hein will win. He has the know-how - number one: he’s a strong contestant and number two: he does well for himself in the wild.
Tashi: But he has no social skills.
Elsie: That’s true but at the end of the day I feel that if they’re gonna base their votes according to the strongest person or the person they need most at camp which could help him make it to the final two.
Tashi: Why Angela for the win?
Elsie: Because I think she’s also a player. Number one, she’s small and they’re going to need someone small for some of the challenges and number two, they’re underestimating her strength so somebody who’s most likely to go into the final two would take Angela with.
Tashi: Why Amanda?
Elsie: Because she doesn’t like losing so she’s pretty strong that way and she’s got social skills. She knows how to communicate people and probably make people think she’s on their side so she’s got that as well.
Tashi: Who would you definitely
not like to see win?
Elsie: Um - let me think … it’s hard to say but watching the show - I don’t think I’d like Grant to win because Grant is really, really playing a serious game.
Tashi: But so is Rijesh.
Elsie: Yes but I got to spend a lot of time with Rijesh so I got close to him and I know where he’s coming from. Grant, there’s a lot of things he seems be keeping away from his tribe members number one and number two, he’s also playing puppet master of his team. I’d like to see him being found out by his tribe members - he was the opposition as well.
Tashi: So what did you talk about when you were sitting around the fire? Family and that sort of thing?
Elsie: No not really hey, most of the time we’d eat and then we’d talk about the challenge of the day - you know how it was, Dyke and Hein got along so they’d have their own kind of conversation, Angela and Amanda had their own kind of conversation, Rijesh and I would have our own kind of conversation - we mostly spoke about nightlife and how nice it would be to be dancing right now.
Tashi: Are you back at work now?
Elsie: At the moment I’m working on a governmental project in West Africa, I’m building low-cost housing in Nigeria.
Tashi: How did you go from hotel management to that?
Elsie: It’s always been an interest of mine to work on such a project and a friend of mine who was lucky enough to hear about it gave me a call and asked if I’d be interested in working on it.
Ends