Nina Interview

Tom Santilli, Survivor Examiner: Hello Nina! Sorry to see you go!
Nina Poersch: Oh thank you! I'm sorry to see me go too!
Tom Santilli: First, I wanted to clear something up from last week. When I spoke to Vince, he told me with confidence and clarity that you had an Immunity Idol and that he saw it, but you were never shown finding one. So did you have an Idol in your possession or not?
Nina: I did not have an Idol. Vince and I had talked, and I had been getting asked by the whole tribe over and over again if I had found one. Jenn even asked me and I told her no and she said, well, you've been out searching for a long time, so I think that you have an Idol. I was like, well, you can think what you want but I don't have an Idol. Of course, I wouldn't have told her anyways if I did. But I told Vince, they all think I have an Idol, maybe we should just let them think I have one and let them split the vote. So I let Vince think that he came up with the idea, whatever. As long as we can make it work for us, I'm game. But no they thought I had an Idol, but I didn't.
Tom Santilli: OK, well that clears that up, not sure what Vince was talking about. So anyways, about your hearing. You seemed deeply affected by your tribe's reaction to your hearing loss. But going into the game, you had to know that it would come up and would need to be addressed. What reaction did you hope for? What were your expectations?
Nina: Going into the game, I knew it was going to be hard. I knew also that I would have some struggles being one of the oldest ones there. But honestly, when I look at myself, I don't see a deaf person. Yeah, I'm deaf, I have cochlear implants and I don't hear perfect like you or anyone else who hears normal. But I really didn't expect it to play a part in my game at all. I kind of just expected people to say, oh OK, she can't hear that well, that's fine, we're good. And that's not how it went down. I can tell you when I first got to the beach, Joe asked me if I was going to be able to do challenges. I looked at him and said, yeah, why? He said, well, because you can't hear. I was like, how was that going to make any difference? I was very confident that I was going to be able to do the challenges. So I knew right then and there on Day One that Joe had planted the seed that he had doubted me because of my hearing, and I was really bummed by that. Vince told me over and over that the girls didn't like me because I couldn't hear. So I had a lot of things being said to me about my hearing, and I knew because of that, that this was going to suck.
Tom Santilli: Many of your tribe mates though, said that it was you, not them, who continued to talk about it and make it an issue. Is there any validity to that?
Nina: I really don't. I know it looked that way, and it may have seemed that way for them, but the fact of the matter is, they were bothered by the fact that I couldn't hear. They did think I wasn't going to be able to perform because I couldn't hear. The vibes that I got off of them was that they didn't want me there because I couldn't hear. The vibes that I got is that they wish they would have had someone else on their tribe, but they got, quote-unquote "stuck" with me. I guess with them being young, they just really don't know how to deal with someone who has a disability. I think they didn't want to come across as being bullies, which they weren't, I never thought of them as bullies. But they didn't want to come across as, you know, being politically incorrect that they didn't want to be with a hearing impaired person. But I never one time said to them that I couldn't do something because of my hearing.
Tom Santilli: You were also the oldest person on your tribe. Do you think that and/or other factors more than just your hearing, played into your inability to really fit in with them?
Nina: I don't really feel like my age played a factor for me, I feel like my age played a factor for all of them. They looked at me like this older woman. I was old enough to be all of their moms except for Will. I have a 31-year-old son, Vince is 32. They just didn't like that. For me, I can blend in and hang out with my son and have a blast. I hang out with young people all the time and have a blast. But for them, maybe it was just too weird to hang out with an older person and try to have some fun.
Tom Santilli: If you don't mind, I know that a lot of fans are curious about your condition. You weren't born deaf, you became deaf at a certain point. Explain to me, if you will, what your cochlear implants do, how they work, and what it's like for you to hear and carry on with your every-day life.
Nina: With the cochlear implants you have a device that is implanted in your cochlea, and then you wear an external speech processor, that sort of looks like a hearing aid but it doesn't go in your ear canal. All of the voices and everything go through that speech processor and communicates with the computer chip that's inside your head, and that's how you can hear. Now, my hearing range is much smaller than a normal person's so because of that, sometimes we miss certain sounds when we're talking to people. Some can hear men's voices better than women's. For me I hear women better than men. Whispering is a little bit harder. In my every-day life, I function fine. One of the main things I need though, is when I do talk to people, I need them to face me. I am not a great lip-reader at all. But when you can hear what someone is saying and see their lips moving, it makes it a whole lot easier to hear. Other than that I live a completely normal life, I mean look, here we are talking on the phone.
Tom Santilli: Almost everybody who plays Survivor says they'd play again in a heartbeat if asked. But in your day-after CBS.com interview, you said that you would not play again. Tell my why you wouldn't play again.
Nina: When we did that interview that was right after the game ended, and I was still very emotional that I got voted out and about how I felt about it all. So back then sure, there was no way I was playing again. But if you ask me that today or last month or a few months ago now that I've been back home and have had a chance to really absorb my whole experience, I would say yes, I would totally play again. I would play again and I would play a totally different game. I think I would go into it a bit more headstrong and much more aggressive.
Tom Santilli: Let's talk about that last challenge. What was Joe's strategy all about (not including you in it), and do you have any regrets for going along with it?
Nina: I do 100% regret going along with his decision and wish that I would not have. Because if I did participate I really think we could have won that challenge. Joe did not give me a reason in the beginning. He didn't explain things until we got back to camp. And he said Nina, we really just thought you would get in our way. You tripped on the high step in the first challenge and we thought that you would trip up there and that you would bring us down. Which is, you know, stupid. That was a dumb reason to sideline me in that challenge. We would have totally won.