The lion in Africa is known not only for its supremacy within the Animal Kingdom, but for the great courage with which it accepts challenges and consequently fights back.
For this reason, doctor and mountaineer Francesco Cassardo, a 34-year-old from Turin, decided to call his project to climb the four peaks on the African continent that exceed 5,000 meters, "African Lion," and he is already halfway there with climbing partner Stefano Roagna.

The law of rock is a bit like the law of the savannah: glory, greatness but also drama and cruelty of fate.
So Cassardo's venture between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania comes after a near tragedy and one that unfortunately happened.
But there is also another reason.
A promise is a promise, especially when it feeds on the pure and sincere air of the highest altitude.
Telling this story is Francesco himself, at the portal of Italians in Kenya.

"On July 20, 2019, I miraculously saved myself from a bad accident climbing Gasherbrum VII, one of the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan with fellow adventurer Carlalberto "Cala" Cimenti, a master of life and mountaineering. 500-meter fall, broken bones and the beginning of frostbite, the return to Italy and the endless treatments with only one desire: to return to altitude.
With Cala, we had already planned an expedition to Kilimanjaro for the following year, but because of my rehabilitation and then the Covid pandemic that shook the world and closed the borders, we postponed, with the desire to have that African experience together, climbing all the mountains over 5,000 meters."

Cala Cimenti is still the only Italian to have climbed all the peaks above 7,000 meters in the territory of the former Soviet Union, and for this he earned the title "Snow Leopard." But Francis' friend is gone, swept away by an avalanche in their Piedmont region on Feb. 8, 2021. The mountains are like that, but goals do not have to die, especially if they turn into a promise. Rather, they can sublimate into something useful and necessary.

"I am a doctor, and already when I was with Cala in Pakistan, I realized that what we mountaineers do can also have an important human side, helping the people who live in the places in the world where we go and where often the conditions of the people are problematic. Already with Cala I had decided that on future expeditions I would bring my medical expertise, as well as deliver medicine and do training. So we approached World Friends, an Italian NGO that is very active in Kenya, to combine our passion for mountaineering with concrete help that we could offer. Through the Turin-based volunteer organization "Italian Doctors for Emerging Africa" (IDEA) I will have the opportunity to make a medical contribution in one of the poorest and most deprived regions of East Africa, Karamoja in Uganda, where I will teach local doctors how to use an ultrasound machine donated by IDEA. It will be a fitting adjunct to climbing the peaks of this first adventure, Uhuru Peak on the Kibo of the Kilimanjaro massif, Batian and Nelion on Mount Kenya, and Margaret, Alexandra and Albert on the Ruwenzori. On Kilimanjaro there is also Mawenzi, but it was more complex to organize and dangerous, with special licenses to be obtained. So we postponed it. The aim, as with the 'Snow Leopard' in Asia, is to establish the title of 'African Lion' for those who conquer all African peaks above 5,000 meters."

It is likely that Francis, in this sense, will soon be the first African Lion King of the mountains but before that he will be a lion of solidarity. Before leaving for Kilimanjaro, by fundraising, he himself collected donations to buy a second ultrasound machine that he will probably take to Africa when he faces Mawenzi.
And here we are on the African adventure. As we speak with Francis, he and Stephen have just descended from Mount Kenya, along the routes that were Felice Benuzzi and his two fellow adventurers, prisoners of the British during World War II.
"I started Benuzzi's book Escape to Kenya," Cassardo admits, "but then our adventure began and I will finish it later. Before Mount Kenya, however, there was Kilimanjaro and it was particularly exciting also because with me were my parents, from whom I inherited a passion for mountaineering, and my girlfriend. When I came back destroyed and frozen from Pakistan, from my hospital bed, my father and I made a promise to each other, 'we will go to Kilimanjaro together,' and we did. Fantastic to see those incredible landscapes together, even though it was, at least for me, a bit of a tourist climb."
And even more exciting, in the words of the mountaineering doctor from Turin, was facing Mount Kenya.
"A beautiful and severe mountain, reminiscent of our Alps, you enjoy it all and there is an organization of experienced guides who make you feel comfortable. With classic African adventures on the side, like waking up at dawn in a tent and seeing a herd of buffalo not too far from us...mind-boggling. But I could never have done the first Mt. Kenya of my life without sleeping in the Howell bivouac on the Nelion summit and enjoying the sunrise and sunset. It was unforgettable."
In a few days, the Ruwenzori in Uganda, another completely different adventure, both as an expedition and as landscapes, before the experience of helping others that Francis longed for and that his friend Cala urged him to do.
For this is what Africa is all about: nature, destiny, peaks and troughs, life.
And a true mountain lion knows this.