It is sad that Nicola was voted out of Survivor this week. She's a very pleasant person, strong-minded yet graceful, and combined the sort of physical and mental skills that should have enabled her to go far in the game. However, as she put it, what makes the game fascinating is how unpredictable it is, and how nobody can prepare for all eventualities.
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Physical survival skills are certainly useful, but only if you're allowed to stay around long enough to be accepted as useful. So one may need to be able to catch fish, but it’s even more important to be capable of evading capture yourself. And even then you're likely to be dumped as soon as you're no longer needed.
Social and interpersonal survival skills are also important in this show – despite the fact that, in the first few weeks, one tribe has to vote someone out, and a contestant can become vulnerable for reasons that have little to do with them and are more based on hunches and prejudices.
s Nicola discovered this week, one can be caught in the cross-fire between other groups. She rightly recognised Rijesh as the author of her downfall, as clearly he engineered her ousting in order to shift the tribal dynamics in what he saw as his favour.
Rijesh is the mastermind in the group
He wanted to break up the trio and prevent them from having the ability to form a larger alliance which could vote against him in the end. All three were valuable workers, but he obviously judged Nicola as the most expendable of the three, and chose to keep the others around to provide for him. Notice how skilfully he fostered the resentment between his lazy ladies and the workers; so as to isolate them and reduce their chances of forming any alliances.
He had the advantage that motor-mouth Dyke - who would be a powerful competitor if he had arrived on the island with his lips sewn-shut and who appears to constantly annoy the others - may be easier to vote off in later episodes. Whereas Nicola, who has real interpersonal skills, would have been likely to have strengthened her position had she stayed around longer.
Although the allocation of contestants to tribes appeared to be truly random, the result was one tribe which worked together rather well despite having some weak members; and the tribe, Pilau, who are deeply divided between those who get on with the necessary work and those who are always waiting for an invitation.
And of course, if they ever actually received such an invitation, they'd complain that it was intolerably bossy to issue an invitation. Their prime aims appeared to be to do as little work as possible, and to seethe with resentment at every opportunity.
The dos and the don'ts
The great divide in this tribe was not at all between farm and city people, as some have suggested. Nicola put it perfectly as she described the tribe as divided between the ‘do's and the don'ts’.
There was the trio of herself, Dyke and Hein who, when they saw a job needing done, got up and did it. And then there was Rijesh and his fellow musketeers, who wished to function entirely in an advisory capacity. They complained they had not been ‘allowed’ to do anything, as though the trio had persistently taken each tasks upon themselves and forced the others to remain inactive.
These are not providers – they are rather more used to being provided for. They remind one of baby birds who sit in the nest, cheeping raucously, while their harried parents rush to and fro, cramming food down their throats.
Nicola is a dairy farmer, although she grew up in the rather un-bovine environs of Sandton. In order to be away for the duration of this series of Survivor, she carefully trained her staff and workers to be able to manage without her, and seems to have done such a good job of this, that she now feels at a loose end. She said she entered the contest because she liked situations which keep you on your toes and greatly enjoyed the whole process.
It’s important for a tribe and any faction within a tribe, to seek to be united. But they're more powerful if united for some shared principles and aims, rather than being united against other people, as in this situation.
Looking back
Nicola said she was proud of "her guys", Dyke and Hein, and admitted she would like to see Hein win, as she believed he'd be a ‘worthy winner’. Unlike most of the others, Hein gives the impression he is already a survivor and that he has for years, survived. This is in distinction to the girls in his tribe, who seem to have handled no life crisis more horrible than a torn fingernail.
Yet despite her obvious like for Dyke, she found it difficult to explain his skills at verbal offence – and wondered whether this was his way of making friends - by verbally wrangling with others and expecting his remarks to be accepted as jokes. She said she thought he would find a way to make amends, yet said she thought he should first apologise convincingly and felt that those who glow in the dark with resentment for him will be prepared to accept his apology, however it might be phrased.
However, it appeared that staying clear of conflicts and in the background while being pleasant and useful, was not enough to save her.
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