In her first interview since announcing her upcoming trip to Africa, Paris Hilton, known for her party girl hijinks and reality television show, “The Simple Life,” reveals details about the trip, her plans to take her life in a different direction and perhaps another reality TV show.“Before, my life was about having fun, going to parties-it was a fantasy. But when I had time to reflect, I felt empty inside. I want to leave a mark on the world,” she told Associate Editor Ramin Setoodeh in the October 22 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, October 15).

One of her first steps in shedding her old persona, aside from cutting her hair and scaling down her time partying, will be to take a five-day-long trip to Rwanda. She will be visiting schools and health-care clinics and even staying in decidedly un-Hilton-like accommodations.

“I’m scared, yeah. I’ve heard it’s really dangerous,” she says. “I’ve never been on a trip like this before.” She says she’ll resort to eating candy bars if that’s what it takes to get her through any foreign-cuisine issues. She’ll be traveling with a little-known children’s charity called “Playing for Good.”

One familiar aspect of the trip will be the camera chronicling it all. “She’s using her celebrity and the cameras that follow her for the good of humanity,” says Scott Lazerson, the organization’s founder. Let’s not forget the good of Lazerson, and Hilton. Turns out that he’s filming the trip in hopes of selling it as a reality show called “The Philanthropist,” featuring various selfless celebrities who rescue the world’s poor.

Unlike other celebrities her age that have run into trouble with the law, Hilton has been smart about how she handled the situation, Setoodeh reports. When she wasn’t crying during her stint in jail this summer, she spent her time studying the script for “Repo!” “I was auditioning and practicing in my cell,” she says. “I had nothing else to do.”

In “Repo! The Genetic Opera!” Hilton plays an heiress with an addiction to plastic surgery. Perhaps in an attempt to distance herself from her character, she plays the role in a black wig and prosthetic, Nicole Kidman-like nose.

“You should have seen me yesterday,” she told Setoodeh, who was on the set. “I had a melted face all cut up with scars. I looked horrible. It was so embarrassing.” “Repo!” director Darren Lynn Bousman says he wouldn’t have it any other way. “I don’t want her to look like Paris Hilton, because I want people to know she got this role because she can act.”