A man who was attacked by a hippo in Zambia is aiming to raise £20,000 for a Catholic mission hospital which saved his life.
63-year-old Roland Cherry was flipped from his canoe by a hippo while on a camping safari holiday in June.
He found himself wedged in the animal's jaws and dragged to the bottom of the Kafue River, a tributary of the Zambezi.
"I thought that my time was up!" he said.
"At the bottom, it then fortunately released me and my lifejacket helped lift me back to the surface. I counted to 10, realising that the river was quite deep at that point.
"At the surface I took a gulp of air but then the hippo grabbed me again and tossed me like a ragdoll, fortunately towards the riverbank where I was able to do a bum-shuffle back to the edge."
His wife Shirley and the rest of the group raised the alarm and he was pulled onto a motorboat. He'd suffered severe bite wounds to his legs, arm and shoulder and had a 10-inch wound to his abdomen. He was taken to the nearest village, Chirundu and onto the Mtendere Mission General Hospital. Mr Cherry says that decision "undoubtedly saved my life".
"As soon as we arrived, this little African hospital swung into action" Roland added.
"Without thinking twice or asking for my insurance details, they assessed the hippo damage and whisked me into theatre to clean my wounds. If they hadn’t acted so promptly there is a strong likelihood that sepsis would have set in which could have proved fatal. I can think of no better illustration of 'the kindness of strangers'. However, I shouldn’t have been surprised as Mtendere Mission Hospital is a Christian mission hospital, largely funded by an Italian diocese."
The hospital carried out emergency surgery before he was transferred to a hospital in Johannesburg where he underwent several more operations.
He says the emergency treatment by staff at the nearby Mtendere Mission Hospital gave him a second chance of life and he now wants to raise £20,000 for the hospital:
"I vowed that assuming I made it home to Warwickshire I would talk about the incident at a fund-raising event for the Mtendere Mission Hospital and see if we can offer something back to the hospital that had almost certainly saved my life.
"If you feel able, please give what you can afford so that we can help this wonderful little hospital carry on its excellent work in rural Zambia so that both the community and indeed any visiting strangers can benefit from their life-saving care."
Mtendere Hospital is a non-profit institution belonging to the Zambian Catholic Diocese of Monze. The hospital functions thank to contributions from the Catholic Diocese of Milano in Italy, the Sisters of Charity of St Capitanio and Gerosa (also called Sisters of the child Mary), the Zambian government and donations from international and non-government organisations.