Survivor NZ: Why Josefien Maasdam's tribe made the 'right call' voting her off
Survivor contestant Josefien Maasdam was voted off the show on Sunday night's episode.
Eliminated Survivor contestant Josefien Maasdam says her tribe-mates made the 'right call' to vote her off.
Maasdam was the first castaway eliminated from the second season of Survivor NZ. She was voted off in an episode airing Sunday night.
The elimination was made more heart-wrenching by the fact Maasdam had hand-picked all the tribe members that voted her out after winning the show's first reward challenge.
But Maasdam says there's no hard feelings between her and the other contestants, many of whom contacted her after the show to apologise.
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"I can't be mad at their game play, because they probably did a good thing by getting rid of me," she says.
"My response has been, 'You probably made the right call.' Because I hadn't started playing the game yet ... I was so strong in challenges that I think if I'd started placing myself in a strategical place, I might have been a real threat."
Maasdam says she's glad she was eliminated because she wasn't put in a position where she had to do something that was morally wrong.
She does admit to being shocked on the night, however. When her name was read out for the first time, her reaction was one of annoyance, and she wondered which of her tribes mates had taken a stab at her. But as her name was read again and again, it dawned on her that she'd "horribly miscalculated the situation".
Maasdam had assumed Karla Karaitiana, who she'd voted for, would be eliminated that night.
In hindsight, though, Maasdam is glad her tribe-mates chose her. She says the the elimination showed her she wasn't cut out for the cut-throat world of Survivor.
"It's not shown on the episode but there were people who lied to my face in the lead up to that tribal council. But as soon as that happened, and I realised I was surrounded by people that were capable of that, so easily and so quickly, I realised that I was making a lucky escape.
Maasdam was voted out by her castmates in the Chani tribe.
"If that's how people play on day three, there's no way I would have made it out clean and made it out there the way I would have wanted to if I'd gone longer."
"If I didn't make the top three, I would have wanted to be the first one out. Because everyone else is just stuck there and they're suffering. What else do you come out with? Beyond regrets and hoping that they don't show you saying XYZ about someone who you actually like as a person."
She said she'd struggled to write down Karaitiana's name at tribal council.
"Writing down Karla's name down knowing she was going home was really really hard, it broke my heart, and then I was like, 'How am I going to do this for potentially 17 other people?' I'm just a big softie."
Maasdam was a strong contender in the show's challenges, causing her tribe-mates to perceive her as a threat.
By the time Maasdam was voted out, she and the others in Chani tribe had gone without food for three days due to their inability to make fire to cook rice on. She said that deprivation was part of what made Survivor so tough.
"You think the hardest part of the game will be competing in challenges, or figuring out strategies. But really it's that you have to do those things while starving, while overheating, while being scorched in the sun or drenched in the rain, while being covered in creepy crawlies, and itchy and dirty and stuffy and hungry - that's the aspect of the game that really dishevels a person really really quickly. And that's the part that nobody can prepare you for. ... You can't tell yourself, 'I will be at the point of starvation where I'm actually scared to stand up in case I pass out.'"
- Stuff
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