Quick action by a local hospital helped save his life, as he sustained significant injuries to his leg, abdomen, and shoulder.

Cherry, an experienced canoeist, recalled that he quickly realized he had dislocated his shoulder, leaving him unable to swim to safety.

As he struggled in the water, he was grabbed by the hippo and dragged underwater.

Fearing for his life, Cherry thought, “Oh no, what a way to go… I’m not ready to die,” believing he wouldn’t survive the attack.

He later found himself sitting in shallow water on the bank, but the hippo grabbed him again. He told the BBC:

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.

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.

I was in its jaws and I didn’t see it once – we have eyewitness accounts of that happening – but I was never conscious of that.

He said he recalled his wife calling for him as “friendly arms” pulled him from the water and placed him on a motorboat back to camp.

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

“I saw him surface, then he was thrown in the air,” she said, adding that if the hippo had attacked her, the outcome might have been fatal.

Cherry sustained a 10-inch wound to his abdomen, a thigh injury, and a dislocated shoulder. Hospital staff in Johannesburg indicated that had his wounds been deeper, he might not have survived, noting they had never encountered a hippo attack survivor before.

After seven operations over two weeks, Cherry credited the initial treatment at Mtendere Mission Hospital with saving his life and is now raising funds for the hospital through a Just Giving page.

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.

More: Pindula News