‘I don’t hate hippos despite one attacking me’

A holiday of a lifetime in Zambia almost ended in tragedy when a hippo hit a couple’s canoe and flipped them into the water, dragging 63-year-old Roland Cherry into the depths before tossing him into the air, causing major injury.

Mr Cherry and wife Shirley, from Warwickshire, were in the third week of their dream trip when disaster struck on the Kafue River and he ended up wedged in the animal’s jaws.

Quick-thinking by a local hospital saved his life, said Mr Cherry, who suffered serious leg, abdominal and shoulder injuries.

He said he did not hate hippos since he was “conscious we were in their territory” while in the water, but he was “not very fond of what [one] did to me”.

What started out as an adventure in June to see wildlife in southern Africa became a very close encounter for the couple and their guides.

The attack by the submerged animal happened near the Cherries’ camp during a leg of the trip that was an organised canoe safari.

“When the hippo first hit the canoe, there was a massive crash, much like a car crash really,” said Mr Cherry, an experienced canoeist.

The craft “reared up in the air”, tossing the pair into the water.

“I remember surfacing, realising my shoulder was quite badly injured and I realised I’d dislocated it from the outset and the consequences were that I couldn’t actually 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 was then dragged to the bottom of the river.

Mr Cherry explained: “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 said he then remembered being sat in shallow water on the bank, but was grabbed again.

“We know subsequently from fellow travellers I was grabbed again and thrown through the air like a rag doll but towards the bank which was the godsend,” Mr Cherry 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 added: “I was in its jaws and I didn’t see it once – we have eye witness accounts of that happening – but I was never conscious of that.”

He said he remembered his wife calling for him and “friendly arms” dragging him before he was put on a motor boat and taken back to camp.

Shirley Cherry said she had managed to swim to the riverbank, meaning the hippo went for her husband.

“I did see him surface and I think he took a gulp, and then I thought I saw him being thrown in the air,” she said.

“The hippo could have attacked any one of us and I can’t help feeling if the hippo had… if it had been me, I wouldn’t be here now, so I think Roland took one for the team.”

Mr Cherry suffered a 10-inch (25cm) wound to his abdomen, plus a thigh injury and dislocated shoulder.

Hospital staff in Johannesburg, South Africa, told him if the wounds had been slightly deeper he may not have survived.

Nurses also told him they had never met a survivor of a hippo attack as most were usually fatal.

Mr Cherry said he had had seven operations across a period of more than two weeks, but he felt his earliest treatment by Mtendere Mission Hospital near to where the attack happened had saved his life.

He is now raising money for the hospital through a Just Giving page.

“I’m forever in their debt which is why I’m raising money to try and see what I can give back,” he said.

“They’ve given me an awful lot – a second chance at life and I need to give back to them.”

He said he appreciated the group had been in the hippo’s natural habitat and subsequently had learnt his attacker was a protective female with a calf.

“We were there to see the natural world and we wanted to see, but I didn’t want to see that close up,” he said.