I´m a Survivor
Survivor, Sofi Chevalier left her home in the Algarve to take part in a gruelling french TV challenge. Leaving her young daughter for two months, just weeks after her marriage ended, Sophie Sadler chats to the kite-surfing action woman to find out how the experience has given her a new direction.
The TV show called Koh-Lanta in France aired in March on channel TF1. Like the name suggests contestants are sent to an island with nothing and have to survive the ordeal while taking part in a number of challenges to either win a “comfort” or avoid being voted out of the game by fellow contestants.
Not unfamiliar to challenges Sofi, who was born in Brittany left her job in teaching to become a kite-surfing instructor in Zanzibar. It was here that she met her British husband Marcus, who was in IT and together they set up the kite mag KiteSista, dedicated to female kite-surfers.
After the birth of their daughter, Anita, they moved to Lagos in 2017 due to its great kitesurf conditions, friendly atmosphere and good International schools for Anita. While here Sofi was approached by someone from a production company who had identified her as a possible contestant for a TV show called Ninja Warriors.
Sofi turned down the part but said if an opportunity ever came up to appear on Koh-Lanta she would be interested. Sofi had watched the show since she was a teenager and was a huge fan and always wondered if she would be able to do it.
To her delight, she was invited to a casting in Paris, where you are put in front of a camera and then probed to see how you react once pushed so they can assess your personality. She then got a call back where potential contestants are given psychological, physical and drug tests.
Three weeks before the show started, she found out that she was one of 21 selected to take part from the 45,000 that applied. She could tell only close family members where she was going due to the high secrecy surrounding the show so needed to make excuses to explain her absence to others.
Sadly, just two weeks before she was due to leave for the show her relationship with Marcus ended and she found herself in Fiji with 21 challengers.
The first test of the season taking part in the mythical Post-Test, which is usually the final round of the show reserved for the last three candidates in the game. This year it was their first test, where they must stand on a post of just 10 cm in the blazing sun balancing until they fall off. She lasted 1 ½ hours due to her yoga skills but as she eventually fell as she was still a bit seasick from the journey.
This is how the game started and following this, she went 11 days without any food apart from some coconut and water to survive. She lost 10 kilos but says it takes you into a totally different mindset. There is literally nothing given to contestants so they have no shelter, no beds, no form of entertainment, no contact with anyone from the outside apart from the tasks and only a few clothes. “Everyone should experience hunger like that in order to take a step back to analyse how you live normally to excess.”
Unfortunately missing her daughter and reflecting on what had happened took her into dark places in her mind. “My mind was just in a loop worrying that Anita would think I had abandoned her. Fortunately, the producers of the show watch you and could see I was distressed so they talked to me and assured me that if there were any problems with my daughter they would tell me, so they were very caring in that way.”
In one challenge the chief of their tribal team had to choose whether they received a comfort which was a phone call to their family or food. The team chose rice as they were starving but then the presenter confronted her as to how she felt having missed her baby so much but choosing food and she felt very emotional but felt having food for the team was a priority.
The only food they did get during the experience was the rice, a type of sweet potato which grew on the island and they also ate geckos and spiders!
She was voted out 10th after 27 days after she was assigned to work with a male competitor and she felt the other competitors voted against him so therefore she had to leave as well. She confesses she was not one of the big “personalities” of the season as she did not excel in anything and did not get into any fights or confrontations but felt proud that she had stayed level headed and came away with her integrity.
And before you ask, no there was no romance, she says you feel far too smelly to feel attractive although she did cuddle up to some men during the night but only for warmth; “You just start feeling like you are taken over my animal instincts and the desire to cuddle up to someone in the night is for warmth, not any romantic ideas!”
Far from driving Sofi into the media world, she found the experience had the opposite effect and it made her re-evaluate her priorities. She is still teaching kite-surfing in Lagos and has decided to follow a more spiritual path.
Here grandmother though her Reiki and tarot card reading and she is now looking to give people spiritual guidance. Her latest business venture if to offer retreats which incorporate kite-surfing, spiritual healing and yoga.
Despite all this, she says she would definitely do the show all over again as it was one of the best experiences of her life. This is one survivor who can’t be kept down for long!
www.sista.zone
https://www.instagram.com/sophiekohlanta/
