Second part of the interview from post 539, starting at 04'45:
Were these the moments when you thought: I might be a little lonely now, but my life is so great and I want to actually do something for others?
Exactly, that's where it came from. I grew up in a bubble, everything was great all the time, I never even had to fight for my career, and I always knew: this is not normal, I want to give something back somehow, and I want to see the world as it really is. I always knew that it is not normal how I grew up and how lucky I was from the very beginning. And finally now I had the time, or took the time, to really search for a project and picked this great collaboration. I found this topic about girls' education through Plan, because I've been a partner for a kid there for quite some time and I knew that it was the perfect NGO for me. It's from Hamburg and has its offices all over the world, they have a lot of really great projects all over the world and then we agreed on Burkina Faso, because it is really my topic, a topic that has influenced my career a lot.
[They show a short film about Toni in Burkina Faso. The interview bit:]
"I haven't seen a single tv here or a single magazine, honestly, they have canisters at footballs and that's it. And apart from that they study, that's really amazing. I'm surprised they know what a model is, it's not that important to know, there are more important things to know in the world."
Very impressive pictures. What was the most impressive thing for you?
I just rewatched it for the first time..that is, I didn't see it at all before. So many things. Most of all the streets, the main streets, that really
were the town, we were driving with our van and the film crew on these streets and looking out of the window was like the most exciting cinema ever. [this made me cringe, it's first world ignorance at its best]. Just to look out of the windows and to see how the people there live, all these kids there, without clothes, without food, without adults sometimes, in the middle of the desert, and every girl from 8 or 9 years on carries another baby on her back. I saw women carrying huge tables on their heads and they walked on very proudly, always straight, they couldn't turn around...just how they accept all of this as a given, and are content nevertheless, you wave and they smile back. all this waving all the time, I was waving all day long sitting in the car.
[they show another film that's cut out of the linked version]
Impressive how they manage to be still happy..
Yes, sure, it makes you happy...seeing that they have still their rituals...but this [where the film took place] was very rural, like three hours away from the next city, there was literally nothing, the women and the kids there looked at us as if we were extraterrestrials. It was very difficult there to get in touch.
The men really were the group leaders, it kind of shocked as, they [women and children] weren't allowed to look at us and to say hello. We always asked: 'Where's the mother? Where does the mother live'...
Even more important that you were there to draw attention to this project...
Yeah, sure, it's really very difficult, they stick to their religions very much. [She probably wanted to say that societies are organized according to religious patriarchic rules.]
So now your back again in your world, in a luxurious world, a great world. What do you take with you from this experience?
I'm still thinking about the girls, it was so easy for me to get my Abitur and they have to fight so hard for it, girls how get the scholarship to become a teacher sometimes have 3 or 4 children and see them once in two years because they have to live somewhere else, 5 hours away, to become a teacher. And the children now live with an aunt or a sister or a friend and they never see each other, only to become a teacher. So I'm really grateful that I made my Abitur...but I somehow want to bring them the simpleness of my life...
It's interesting, one might think, okay, they go there with a film team and so on, it's easy...but you were working 16 hours a day, every day for the whole week, you were driving around a lot...
we were driving around very much, yes, and it was very hot
...and you were one of the few people who didn't get sick.
Oh, you've heard about that, I thought it was top secret. Yeah, almost everybody got sick, I don't know why I didn't get sick...everybody had like 9 vaccinations before, we took malaria pills and so on, well... I'm half vegetarian anyway, and I only ate bread for one week there, you really have to be careful, it's such a different climate, the water is so different, everything... I really feel so sorry, some of us had to fight a little to come back.
[another film]
So Toni, you just told me that you gave a bottle of water to a man...
Yes, we went there together and wanted to see these gold mines, and at the beginning there was only this one guy in his mine, and three women a little further away, with a lot of children around them of course, and we were 2 or 3 hours away from any city or market place ... and we were drinking water and sweating all the time in our air conditioned car, and I had a bottle of water in my hand and felt so bad and gave it to him, and he took it right away and yelled at his people and everybody came running towards him clapping and he was drinking like...it was the first time in weeks or months he had really clean water, and he was so happy and like this... [gesture of gratefulness]
And I was like, 'Oh my god, I have to go back to the car, I'll give you a whole canister of water'.
Seeing this pictures I always think we should think more often about how good life is here in Germany...
...yeah, like, just leaving the tap on...
Were you so pretty as a child already?
Uuuhm ... no. I was very chubby, I had black hair when I was born and was very fat, my aunt always said 'what an ugly baby', so... no.
We have a few baby pics...[shows them]
Ah, well, yeah, they turned blonde at some point. And I always had this weird palm on my head.
Well that's what parents do to make sure the hair isn't all over the face... When you were like 13 years old, what did you dream of?
I was discovered at 13, and at 12...
I mean before you were discovered.
I didn't dream of anything...I always liked cutting hair, I played cashier, I really had no idea what I wanted to be as an adult. It would have come at 14 or 16, I think, but I had no idea at all.
And then there was this fan fest, world cup 2006, in Hamburg, you were at a fan fest...how was that, somebody approached you all of a sudden?
I just walked across Jungfernstieg to get to the cinema, and a game was on, not even Germany, and there was this agent, she picked me out of the crowd and said: 'Do you want to become a model?' All of my girls were with me, all of my friends, so I didn't have to explain it, it was clear, ok, she was approached, so now she's modeling.
But it's not that easy, I mean, how did your parents react?
My mum, well, was like 'I've always told you that you're beautiful, I always knew' - and I was like: 'well, I didn't know, I don't know', and we went to the agency together and talked it over...and yeah, then I had a contract... and then they helped me get a contract with agencies worldwide.
Again I need to leave, more coming soon. (It's still only half of the interview...)
Little Toni:
ndr.de via Starla/Bellazon