Joshua Insurance

***Joshua*** was a castaway on Essential Survivor: Yemen

## Yemen

Being completely unprepared Joshua joined the Munfatih tribe expecting anything and everything to happen. His mild confusion and getting used to everything caused his positioning to plummet all the way to the bottom of the tribe. Unlike Alison, who Joshua perceived to be a Tribe Leader (and bear an idol). Although he wasn’t fully out of it, when Munfatih lost the first challenge Joshua was informed about the consensus vote being on Tony. But due to his close bond with Tony, Joshua threw his vote onto Owen. Even confessing his crime to Owen right after Tribal concluded.

As the Extroverts won the next two challenges, this gave Joshua time to ease into gamemode. He recognized James' social prowess, assuming he’s at the top of the tribe. And after their second challenge win, Joshua wanted to align with Terry, James and Matt as meat shields. This wish came true during the next vote when Munfatih finally lost, the foursome actually became an alliance with the addition of Felix - a guy who Joshua connected with, but assumed as directly in the middle for this vote. The group of five entitled, ‘The High 5’ set their targets onto Khamp. But as Tribal grew closer, Joshua had second thoughts about targeting Khamp. Wanting to target Alison instead, however he stayed quiet and followed the group’s decision, voting Khamp out 5-4. This vote really solidified how divided the tribe was, with Joshua missing the old kumbaya vibe they had.

Luckily, Joshua wouldn’t have to deal with those vibes for much longer as a swap occurred. Mutradid, where Joshua landed in a 3-2 majority with Alison and James. Since this tribe of 5 won 4 straight challenges, not much happened here but there was some development. Mainly Joshua feeling like Alison would flip if she had the opportunity, James revealing his vote steal to him, and feeling like he waited too long to solidify a working bond with Zak and Abby.

After nearly 4 episodes of nothing with Joshua, the merge came and the game heated up. During the first two merge episodes, Joshua was all over the place and extremely indecisive and somewhat erratic with his decision-making. During the F10 Tribal, he knew that Alison and Josh were the main targets, but despite being on Alison’s side, he wavered on telling her about her incoming votes. Luckily,  James from the other side already did, saving Joshua’s temporary ally.

Come F9, and Joshua’s decision-making is even more unpredictable. Joshua had amazing reads this round, fully aware of all 3 voting blocs that would form. But his personal vendetta against Zak and Cedrick really clouded his judgement in a few scenarios. Fortunately, he did take the approach with Zak, Abby and Cedrick and voted out Matt by plurality.

Now we’re at the Final 8. And compared to the first few days in Yemen, Joshua’s threat level has skyrocketed as he’s done extremely well in every immunity challenge thus far. But he wasn’t the focus of this TC, it was apparent to everyone that Zak had a huge deal in orchestrating the previous 4-3-2 vote and a majority of people wanted him out. Unfortunately, this majority all have issues on a game level with each other. But in a surprise burst of loyalty to each other, Alison, Joshua, Felix, James and Neb created a 5-person voting bloc to blindside Zak. Proving effective as he did go home that night, they would have run the game right? Wrong.

As stated before, Joshua’s threat level was rising slowly with every immunity challenge he did well in, and people began to take note of that. So while Joshua was realizing that his chances of winning steadily got lower, there was a plan to vote him out by James, Cedrick and Alison. But Abby had told the remaining castaways beforehand that she wanted to be voted out. So in an act of kindness, Neb Felix and Joshua all voted for her. James, Alison and Cedrick voted for Joshua, and Abigail voted for James. However, James used his Vote Steal on Joshua, sending him home 4-2-1.