Ncumisa Ngcaweni was the fourth Survivor to be voted out of Survivor Panama this past Sunday when her Rana tribe lost Immunity to Aguila despite being given fire to up their strength in the game.
With a strong alliance formed between Jacinda, Danielle and Gareth, they carried a majority vote and snuffed out Ncumisa’s torch citing lack of strength on her part as being their reason. Ncumisa voted for Danielle, as did Zayn and Lezel being in between sided with the alliance of three.
I caught up with Ncumisa early on Monday morning after it all unfolded:
Tashi: Hi Ncumisa - how are you doing?
Ncumisa: I’m bleak - when I watched the episode...
Tashi: Was it as bleak as when it happened or was there a different aspect to it?
Ncumisa: The thing is I knew what was going to happen obviously and I remember exactly what I felt like throughout that Tribal Council hoping it wasn’t gonna be me, hoping it was going to be a tie and when Mark read my name out, I was thinking: “Okay, when he snuffs out your torch don’t cry, don’t cry.” I managed not to when I was there but when I watched the episode I just sat and cried. I felt really pathetic but ja.
Tashi: What were the emotions that you made you cry? Disappointment? Were you hurt?
Ncumisa: I felt very hurt, I felt very disappointed and I also felt very rejected. You know it’s just a game and that it’s not real life and that you have family and friends back home who love you but I think after that after having built your own micro community, when you get the boot it actually really hurts. Even though you know it wasn’t part of your life a few days ago - it cuts quite deep.
I must be honest, it didn’t feel like just a game, it felt like real life. When we got the rice and fire, it was very nice to get it but I was kind of hoping that Gareth would take himself out of the game because he was so miserable, hehehe. After getting the fire and rice he perked up though.
Tashi: Yes, getting that fire was ridiculous. Do you think you would have lasted if you didn’t get it?
Ncumisa: I think so, we were fine. We were living on a small mango each and a bit of coconut and we found a pineapple. Gareth was feeling weaker by the day so I’m not sure how long he would have lasted but I’m sure the rest of us would have been fine.
Tashi: Last week you mentioned that there were things happening that made you think you’d be next to leave. How has Danielle managed to get herself so high up the pecking order above you when her head was on the chopping block?
Ncumisa: I think it was because she spent a lot of time with Gareth and Jacinda - a
lot of time. In fact I was surprised when I watched the first episode and saw that her head had been on the chopping block with them because I wasn’t aware that they'd felt that way about her. I remember talking to Lezel saying: “I don’t trust her, you should have seen the look on her face when she was put in our tribe.”
She was very upset and kept going on about: “We’re weak, we’re really, really weak but it’s fine people - we can have team spirit,” etc and I was thinking: “If you don’t want to be on this tribe then maybe you should just go,” but I didn’t realize that the other people had felt exactly the same way.
I thought that she had been tight with them from the beginning because they spent a lot of time together - especially Danielle and Jacinda - they were like tweedledee and tweedledum, two peas in a pod the whole time. If they went to the loo they went together, if they were swimming they went off together.
Tashi: Did you actually do anything except go for long walks on the beach?
Ncumisa: When we went off to look for food I went looking for food every single day and also myself and Lezel and Danielle, and I think Jacinda, we spent hours in the jungle looking for fruit. While Zayn and Gareth were fishing the girls went off trekking looking for coconut so we actually did quite a lot that they didn’t show.
Tashi: Their justification for voting you off was that you weren’t physically strong but you looked really strong right up until you left.
Ncumisa: I must say I was quite surprised because I also got that impression during the game that they thought I wasn’t very strong. I attributed that to the fact that in Episode 1, it was night time when we were going to our island, they showed pictures of me with my eyes closed and my head against Don’s shoulder - that’s because I’d been vomiting for most of that day.
I was very sick on Day 1 and I’d also vomited on Day 2 and I was feeling nauseous and that went away by Day 3 so I think it was left over from them seeing how sick and nauseous I was.
Tashi: Back to Danielle and the Triumvirate - do you reckon it was a seriously baad idea having all those millions of meetings and choosing Jacinda as a chairperson?
Ncumisa: The thing is the whole chairperson thing - my understanding of it and Jacinda’s understanding of the chairperson thing are
completely different. What we had actually said was that we needed someone, just before we do a challenge, when Mark tells us: “This is the challenge, this is what you must do, “ - we were all talking at once and no-one was really listening so the point of having someone as the chairperson was to have someone who would pull us together and say: “Right, how shall we do this? Let’s not all talk at once.”
It was just for the challenges so I was very surprised when Jacinda said something along the lines of: “Yes well everyone chips in and I just guide us.” I was like :”
What? That wasn’t the idea. “That was news to me. I thought the meetings went on a big long - my understanding of them was that we’d go: “Right we’ve lost the challenge, what went wrong, how can we do better next time?” end of story.
Tashi: Last week you mentioned that you wanted to get into Gareth’s good books - why didn’t you try harder and get more pushy to get him on your side?
Ncumisa: I did try and he felt really terrible because he told me that he’d promised Danielle he wouldn’t vote against her. He told me: “I really think you’re a very useful person in the tribe.“
In fact he said to me: “You’re far more useful than Danielle is. When we get to challenges your input and suggestions are much more useful and shows a lot more common sense than Danielle but unfortunately I’ve given her my word that I’m not going to vote against her and I really do want to stick my word although I’d love to have you stick around.”
In the mornings he’d say: “Ncumi, I’m so tired, I don’t know how I can do this without eating proper food, “ and I’d be like: “No Gareth you’ll be fine, we’re a strong team, “ so I got into his good books by listening to him like that and then when I did try to spend time alone with him it was almost impossible. To get him without Jacinda and Danielle around proved to be mission impossible.
Tashi: Do you think it has anything to do with him being Archers Aqua?
Ncumisa: I don’t know. I have to confess that I’d never heard of the man before I arrived on the island. When I first saw him I thought he looked like the surfer type with the bleached hair etc but I didn’t have a clue who he was.
Someone mentioned it, I can’t remember who and I said: “Who’s that?” I think it’s because I don’t go to the cinema a lot and apparently the adverts where shown there a lot. I have yet to see the advert so I didn’t know him although I have to confess that Danielle and Jacinda did seem quite enamoured with him.
I wasn’t sure if it was tactic to get on his good side by doing some ego stroking or if they were genuinely enamoured. I thought he was a very kind person and he seemed very nice and he made an effort - if he thought someone was feeling excluded he’d be extra nice to them.
Tashi: So now he’s got himself into a situation where he’s committed to Danielle for the long haul.
Ncumisa: Well, that’s what he said. I’m assuming that all those alliances were made when I was puking my guts out on the side of the boat. Of course I had Zayn who told me he wouldn’t vote against me, which I really appreciated.
Tashi: And he didn’t and now he’s in trouble.
Ncumisa: Yes he has to go back and he’s the only one who voted differently.
Tashi: If your positions were swopped, would you have done what Lezel did and voted her out?
Ncumisa: Probably, yes. Her and I never said we wouldn’t vote each other out, we just said we’d share information and look out for each other and say what was going on.
If the tables turned I’d either have done the same thing or - she is actually very influential with the other tribemates - so possibly I would have tried to get Gareth to vote Danielle off. I think I probably also would have avoided causing a tie although obviously being in the position I was I was all for Lezel doing the tie thing.
Tashi: From what you’re saying it was impossible to create a coup?
Ncumisa: I’m not saying it was impossible but I wasn’t able to. I tried but I felt like I was hitting a brick wall the whole time. You know when you try to have a conversation with someone and try to get to know them better?
From the beginning I was trying to get to know Jacinda a little bit better and it was honestly like hitting a brick wall whereas it was a lot easier to talk to Lezel and Zayn and Gareth because they were a lot more forthcoming and you could have a proper conversation instead of one word answers.
Tashi: Were you getting one word answers from Jacinda?
Ncumisa: Mostly, yes.
Tashi: Did it all turn out as you imagined it would be before it started?
Ncumisa: I’d prepared myself for the worst. I’m not into doing outdoorsy things much and up until recently I’ve avoided doing anything that doesn’t involve sleeping in a bed with hot showers. I prepared myself for the worst psychologically so when some people were saying: “This is a lot worse than I thought, “ I was like: “Mmm, actually no, this is as bad as I was expecting it to be.”
I was expecting to be hungry and I was expecting to be weak and I was expecting it to be difficult. What I wasn’t expecting was to struggle so much to get know to people. Normally I don’t find that too difficult but I did find it difficult getting to know people.
Tashi: Do you think it was part of their strategy?
Ncumisa: I think on Jacinda’s side it probably was because she was very calm, nothing really rattled her. She seemed quite detached from the whole thing. She was there but she didn’t seem to be investing anything emotionally which I think was part of her strategy.
As for Danielle, I think she was so shocked by that first Tribal Council. Afterwards she came up to me and said: “Why did you vote for me? Why did you vote for me? What happened?’
I said to her: “If you’d seen your own face when you were put in Rana - you should have used that mirror that you brought with you to the island and also it didn’t help when you kept saying: ‘We’re the weaker tribe but I’m sure we’ll be fine.’”
I said it was very discouraging to listen to and she said:” Oh Don’s gone now so aren’t you sorry you voted for me?” and I said: “No, I had my reasons for voting for you.” I think her strategy after that was to get to know as many people as possible very quickly and to align herself with them quickly.
Tashi: Was there anything that we didn’t get to see that you think was important?
Ncumisa: I wasn’t terribly disappointed that they didn’t show the sight of me hurling my guts in the middle of a challenge but nothing really that juicy happened in my tribe. I mean they didn’t show Danielle freaking out after she’d been given so many votes and going on and on and on about getting them and also Danielle and Zayn had a few tense moments where they were just not happy with each other.
They didn’t get along that well -I think they got on each others nerves. On one occasion when we were in the shelter I said to Zayn: “Calm down,” because I think he went overboard.
They also didn’t show much about Gareth’s chaff. The poor guy had such bad chaff. We didn’t actually see the chaff but we heard a lot about it. Before that Sumo challenge, when we saw the harnesses they had to put on, I thought he was gonna burst into tears because that’s exactly where the chaff was so occassionally he had to go off on his own to lie in the sun to sun his chaff.
Tashi: Do you shop at
Rosmead Spar?
Ncumisa: Actually I do. I’m there about three or four times a week. I live in Hampstead Road which is very close to it.
Tashi: No – don’t say that. So I do I! Hahaha. That’s soo funny. I walk past every day.
Ends