(CBS) Thursday night on "Survivor: Palau," the long-suffering and quickly diminishing Ulong tribe made its seventh straight trip to tribal council and the group's final two contestants, Bobby Jon Drinkard and Stephenie LaGrossa, said goodbye to Ibrehem Rahman.
The vote was a surprise, Rahman tells The Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen. "Early on in the game, Bobby Jon and I pulled each other over and said,'We're from Alabama' and we stuck together pretty much throughout the whole game without having to say...I guess I never worried about him voting for me."
And unfortunately, he says the rules of the game kept him from asking Bobby Jon why he chose to vote him off. "When Jeff says, 'The Tribe has spoken," you don't have a chance to say what happened? I thought we had something going," Rahman says. "Maybe he thought with Steph, he would be better suited to play in the game."
Ibrehim had the chance to ally with LaGrossa, when she was afraid her neck was on the chopping block and proposed to him that they vote Bobby Jon off. Why didn't Rahman take her offer?
"I told Bobby Jon I would stick to him and I just stuck to my word," he says.
It was Bobby Jon Drinkard who for
an hour-and-a-half kept the team in the sea trying to put the floating giant puzzle together, and failed.
"The salt was intense," Rahman says, "I guess you tell yourself it will eventually be over. We were hoping to win, but Coby [Archa from Koror] was good at putting the puzzle together. I definitely would not have been able to do it well, so I don't blame Bobby Jon for it."
A few weeks back, teammates were not as charitable when Rahman failed at an immunity challenge and led Ulong to tribal council. If it were not for a game twist in which Koror gave him immunity, Rahman would have had his flame extigushed then.
Asked what it was like for him then when the tribe returned to camp, Rahman says, "I just reiterated my point. I was just, like, you know, we'll have to vote someone off anyway. And it made it easier for someone to put the bull's-eye on me because of that one challenge. But I didn't think it was right for them to single me out for that one thing."
How does he explain the record six trips to tribal council?
"We got used to tribal council," he says, "It was like a part of what we did. But I think the good thing about the tribe was that we always expected to win, going into every challenge. I think when we started out, we had a big group and a big group of players. It just didn't gel, when it came to the challenges."
The underwater challenges were particularly a problem for Rahman, who was asked by an Early Show caller if he perhaps has a fear of being underwater and should have told that to his teammates.
He replies, "I didn't have a fear of being underwater. That particular challenge you were talking about with the reward with the beef stew. It was just I had a problem getting the bottle off and I panicked a little bit, to be honest, but it wasn't that I have a fear of being under water. So there wasn't much to tell them."
And he notes, considering he knew a lot of the challenges were going to be in the water, it was not to his advantage to expose his weakness in that particular area.
Was he intimidated by LaGrossa, a caller asked?
"I never felt intimidated by her," Rahman says. "I always commended her for doing a great job. I'm never intimidated by having a team member who does better than me or is good."
Ibrehim notes in life and in games he plays the same way, the honest way.
"My strategy was just to play honest and play it hard," he says. "Try to stick beside the people who I felt like were just trying to get out there and do their best rather than doing a lot of back biting."
And if given the opportunity, he says he would he do it all over again, having the peace of mind that he did not "cheat anyone." His only regret, he says, is being out of the game.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/01/earlyshow/series/survivor/main684563.shtmlIf you watch the video He does say he did not think it was fair for him to get the individual immunity neckalace. Also said they always gave it their all.
