No crocodile tears for bride
Woman walks down aisle five days after losing arm in Zambezi River attack
Zanele Ndlovu wore white on her wedding day, from her seemingly endless veil to her snow-coloured dress, all the way down to the gauze wound tightly around what remains of her right arm.
The venue changed, but the wedding date stayed the same. May 4 was the big day for Ndolvu and her now-husband Jamie Fox, who wed in a hospital chapel in southwest Zimbabwe just five days after a 4.8 metre crocodile attacked their canoe and severed her arm.
Ndlovu and Fox were on an adventure tour on the expansive Zambezi River, among the longest in Africa that feeds into Victoria Falls, when a crocodile broadsided their inflated canoe.
She toppled into the river as the Nile crocodile held the canoe in its jaws, Adventure Zone tour company owner Brent Williamson told the Washington Post on Tuesday. Williamson, who co-led the tour, rushed to rescue Ndlovu from the wa- ter. The crocodile bit his canoe, puncturing the pontoon and sending him into the water alongside a guide trainee.
Ndlovu possibly stepped on the crocodile, Williamson said, and it clamped down on her upper biceps. Another trainee, identified only as Norman, gripped her life-jacket and tried to pull her into his canoe, but the force of the crocodile also sent him falling into the river.
“The croc kept holding on and then attempted the death roll,” he said, describing the violent, crashing tumble crocodiles use to drown and dismember their prey for easier swallowing.
The roll broke Ndlovu’s arm, tore away her biceps and stripped her limb of upper ligaments, Williamson said. The crocodile then relented and released her. Williamson climbed into another canoe and provided first aid on a river bank while a rescue helicopter arrived 45 minutes later.
She arrived at a nearby hospital, stabilized, and then, he said, went to the Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo by ambulance, nearly 480 kilometres from Victoria Falls. Doctors immediately decided to amputate her arm, he said. She and Fox were married at the hospital’s chapel. “In one week we went from shock and agony to a truly amazing experience,” Fox, of the United Kingdom, said.
Ndlovu and Fox appear accustomed to adventure on the Zambezi, which feeds into the mighty Victoria Falls. Photos on Facebook show the couple canoeing last March with a different company also based near the falls — a mile-long, towering 106-metre waterfall and magnet for thrill seekers exploring the powerful rapids there.