This blood's for you!

Milk, it turns out, isn't the only potable fluid you can get from a cow

By Bill Wyman

Oct. 18, 2001 | The Boran tribe is suffering.

"It's like going to hell for 35 minutes. It's hot, it's uncomfortable and nothing good's going to happen while you're there," Clarence says.

He's talking about the weekly "tribal council" -- in reality, it happened every three days when the show was filmed, back in September -- the two tribes, the Boran and the Samburu, face going to each week. At the council, someone gets booted off the island ... er, tossed out of the outback ... um, asked nicely to leave the Kenyan nature preserve.

We remember that in the second edition of "Survivor," the one in Australia, one of the tribes, the Kucha, was a lean and mean fighting machine. The other, the Ogakor, were sort of feckless and unkempt, had a sex maniac named Jerri who made all the boys nervous and distracted, and couldn't win a challenge to save their lives. The only thing that saved the Ogakor in the end was when the leader of the Kucha, Mike, the psycho alpha male who killed a baby pig with his bare hands, fell into a fire and burned himself. After that the Kucha caved and eventually became extinct.

But for now, in this, the third season of the show, the Boran are looking positively Ogakorian.

Our Bantu dictionary, close by at "Survivor" recap HQ, says that Boran means: "Steals food. Buffoonish fat guy. Losers."

Last week, you'll remember, the strapping basketball coach, Clarence, was busted for food pilferage. First, he gobbled an extra (but, here in Africa, ineffably valuable and symbolic) cherry from a can the group was passing around. Then he broke out a can of beans without asking and hid the evidence. He got nailed easily on both counts, however. And tubby Tom, the goat farmer from Virginia, was merciless.

But instead of tossing him, the tribe offed doughty Diane, the mail carrier. Since those booted are required to go immediately, they didn't have to worry about her going postal on them right then, though we remind Diane now that she still has the chance, with everyone in America distracted by threats other than those of disgruntled postal workers.

But they also gave a shot across the bow of Clarence. He ended up with two votes against him, one from Diane and one from Tom, who's got an overloud opinion about everything,

"Just to teach him a lesson," as Lex, the tattooed, be-earringed guy, puts it. "Just so he knows he needs to shape up."

Clarence wavers between being properly repentant and still trying to assign blame elsewhere. He figured out Diane voted against him. "She was looking for someone to scapegoat," Clarence tells Jessie. "It's my own fault for being too nice." He's sticking to his story that he only opened the beans for Diane's benefit.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Clarence whispers urgently to her.

"You opened a can of food!" she expostulates.

"All right, yeah yeah yeah yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right," he says quickly, running for cover.

Jessie's not buying what he's selling. "He was trying to get my approval for what he had done," she sniffs to the camera later.

Next page: Where are the hyenas?