A man narrowly survived after being dragged to the bottom of a river and “thrown through the air like a rag doll” when he was attacked by hippo while canoeing on holiday in Zambia.
Roland Cherry, who was on a five-week holiday through southern Africa with his wife, Shirley, sustained severe bite wounds across his body, including a 25cm (10in) wound to his abdomen, as well as a thigh injury and dislocated shoulder in the attack.
Nurses at a hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the 63-year-old was later taken for treatment, said they had never met a survivor of a hippo attack, as most were fatal.
“I do remember thinking: ‘Oh no, what a way to go … I’m not ready to die’ and I thought this was it, because nobody survives hippo attacks,” he told the BBC. “I remember looking down at my legs thinking: ‘That’s not good.’ There was bits of flesh sticking out of my torn shorts and blood over my abdomen.”
He said had held no ill will towards the animal as he was “conscious we were in their territory” but he was not “not very fond” of what the hippo did to him.
The couple from Warwickshire were on a group guided safari along the Kafue River on 25 June, the third week of their trip, when their canoe was struck by a hippo from underneath and lifted out of the water.
Shirley, who was in the front of the canoe, managed to swim to the riverbank but Cherry dislocated his shoulder as the canoe capsized and was unable to swim.
“The instructions were to swim to safety but I couldn’t swim so I was really a sitting duck, trying to swim with one arm, which was never going to end well – and then it grabbed me,” he said.
Cherry said the hippo “grabbed me in its jaws and took me under to the bottom of the river”, and although he could not recall seeing the hippo, he thought his “time was up”.
The hippo released Cherry at the bottom of the river and his lifejacket lifted him back to the surface, where he took a “big gulp of air” before the hippo came for him again.
“I was grabbed again and thrown through the air like a rag doll but towards the bank, which was the godsend,” he said. It was there that he was able to “bum-shuffle” to safety and a motorboat transported him away from the river.
Cherry was due to be taken away immediately by air ambulance but when it did not arrive, he was instead taken to Mtendere Mission general hospital in the nearby village of Chirundu, and credits the staff there with saving his life.
“As soon as we arrived, this little African hospital swung into action. Without thinking twice or asking for my insurance details, they assessed the hippo damage and whisked me away into theatre to clean my wounds,” he said.
“If they hadn’t acted so promptly there is a strong likelihood that sepsis would have set in, which could have proved fatal.”
After hours of wrangling with their insurance company, Cherry was later taken to Milpark hospital in Johannesburg, where he underwent six operations.
He hopes to raise £20,000 to help buy medical equipment for the Mtendere Mission hospital to thank them.
“While recovering in my hospital bed, I had time to think and reflect. What struck me most from this near-death experience was the kindness of strangers,” he said, adding that he wanted to “offer something back to the hospital that had almost certainly saved my life”.
