THE SIMPLE THINGS
Survivor winner Avi’s new life
With $100,000 in his pocket, Survivor season one winner Avi Duckor-Jones had the world at his feet.
Emerging victorious from 40 days in the Nicaraguan jungle, the intrepid teacher had some choices to make. A five-star, round-the-world holiday? Staying at the best hotels and eating at the best restaurants? A flashy new car? Or even a deposit on an Auckland house?
Heading back to unforgiving, rugged and dangerous jungle would be the last thing on most people’s minds, but that’s exactly what Avi (33) did, using his hard-earned winnings to fund the TVNZ web series Avi’s Return to Ghana.
And he was quick about it! In the week after his win, he was already organising equipment and flights to get back to the West African country, where he’d taught teenagers at a school at Cape Three Points, in the nation’s south.
“It was always my intention to go back – I just wasn’t sure when and how,” he tells. “It’s not like going to Australia or Rarotonga, you know! But when I won the show, I knew, ‘this is it.’”
It was in 2014 when Avi, then living a comfortable life in Manhattan taking American students on National Geographic trips and working in bars and restaurants, realised he was “burnt out” by city life.
He missed adventures and being challenged, so he jumped on a plane – well, several planes – and took up a post at Trinity Yard School in Ghana. It was an experience, he says, that was one of the best and hardest of his life.
“It was the simple life and I loved it,” he says. “I was living in a shack, we had bucket showers. If the power went out, which it often did, you’d just have a fire.”
In between surfing the nation’s rugged coastline, surviving malaria in his tiny village and occasionally killing komodo dragons – “They were terrorising our chickens, so we figured, if we kill it, we’d better eat it… it tasted like fishy chicken!” – Avi taught a bunch of “incredible” students, all determined to get as good an education as they could.
“I wanted New Zealanders to see these totally inspiring students, who don’t come from anything but are out there trying to make a better life for themselves, who are pursuing education, craft and trades – working super-hard to make a life for themselves.”
In the web series, Avi and his friend and videographer Nat Gormalova – who took over Avi’s teaching post at the school when he left – begin in Ghana’s capital Accra, with the sole mission to find each and every one of his former students to see how far they had come in three years.
Careful not to give too much away – “You’ll just have to watch!” he laughs – he does say how proud he is of his pupils, particularly his female students who are faced with an incredible pressure and expectation to become mothers and wives at an early age.
“It’s hard for young women in Ghana to not follow the gender roles, but there are a couple of them who are working really hard at starting their own businesses. They’ve all grown up so much.”
But of course, not all of his students’ stories are positive and Avi admits it was tough at times listening to tales from the teens who had lost parents or were working in less than ideal conditions.
“Most of the time, Ghana doesn’t feel like a third-world country, you know, it was my home. But then you hear some things and you remember, that’s right – we really are in West Africa.”
As for Avi himself, the once-nomadic traveller has now found a permanent home in Auckland, a “tiny house” on wheels situated in dense bush, with an incredible view of the city.
For the first time in his life, he even has a proper “job job”, as he calls it, teaching English at a West Auckland college. While it’s not quite “normal”, for a rather house-proud Avi,
it’s positively suburban.
“Life’s great now – it’s one of the best chapters, I think.
I feel very content. I live in a beautiful house, and I’m in the same country as my family and friends for once.
“And I love my job. It’s work that’s fulfilling, although my first day was terrifying. Not because of the students or the classroom, but because of the normalcy of it!” he laughs.
“But what I found out very quickly was that teenagers are the same all across the world – it’s just a whole lot of hormones!”
And, of course, he’s watching the second season of Survivor New Zealand with great interest. He even travelled to Thailand to see the first challenge of the new series being filmed.
“That was such a surreal moment,” he nods. “It was a mix of being envious that the contestants were about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime, but also relief that I wasn’t doing it again!”
For now, he says, he’s happy staying in one place for a little while – although the temptation of adventure is still there.
“But whenever I feel like that, I remember something my brother told me – ‘Avi, you don’t have to choose between Manhattan and Ghana, there are places where you can live both of those lives.’ And now, I feel like I’ve totally found it.”