“A very threatening event today. A hippo has broken the leg of a boy. He is 27 years old. He was going to the farm to work and on the way he met the hippo.
People brought him at Luhombero dispensary but of course there is very little medicine. People from all the corners of the village have come to the dispensary to witness the event. It is very terrible. Up to this moment I am struggling to get a car from the government authority but have not yet succeeded.
The boy cannot get proper treatment in Mahenge, or Ifakara or Morogoro town. It must be in Dar es Salaam. But how to reach there? It is the riddle. I wish I had the way to help. Every day is another riddle.”
— Father Placid
UPDATE** January 30, 2017
Two months after the hippo attack, the victim is still recovering at a medical facility in Ifakara. The hippo, had been a threat in the Luhombero area for months.
Eventually the local government had to make plans to shoot it. “It was not possible to employ a traditional method of killing the hippo because it mostly stayed in the local swamp, not a river.”
