No Picnic on Mount Kenya

 No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi, was first published in English in 1946 and in Italian in 1947. This is a true adventure that is ranked as one history’s greatest real adventures, and it is listed in the Adventure Library. It is subtitled “The Story of Three POWs Escape to Adventure,” and “A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb.” This book grabbed my interest from the very beginning.

 

This is a mountaineering story took place in 1943 in the unlikely location of a POW camp in Kenya. During World War II, the Italians were aligned with the Axis powers and had occupied Ethiopia in 1936 until they were defeated by the Allied forces in 1941. Many Italians were captured and the some were warehoused in Kenya. Benuzzi was one of the Italian captives and he described the mind-killing boredom of life in a POW camp, and while he was staring at Mt. Kenya which was sometimes visible from the camp, he came up with the idea of climbing the 17,000 foot mountain. However, he had no personal mountaineering experienced, was undernourished, and had no mountaineering equipment. Fearful of his dream being found out, he carefully chose two men who could help him achieve this goal and keep his secret. Preparations took months to find suitable climbing tools and to gather enough food to carry with them. It was not the author’s goal to actually leave the camp forever, but rather to climb the mountain and then sneak back into the camp.

 

The camp itself was not difficult to escape, and one of the chief deterrents to the prisoners was the African wildlife, especially the lions and rhinos who were notorious for attacking and killing humans. The man eating lions were especially known for such acts and it was reported that they killed hundreds of Indian laborers who had been imported to help Kenya build a railroad from Mombasa to Lake Victoria at the edge of Uganda. The land itself was a deterrent and then these three Italian men had no weapons other than the ice axes they fashioned from other tools to which they had access.

 

Benuzzi wrote a good story about the adventure itself, but also about the interactions between the three man team. They were nearly killed at many times during the trip from various hazards, and the mountain itself was particularly hazardous. They were very unprepared for all aspects of this adventure. By the time they got down the mountain after a successful climb, they were frozen and emaciated, but they were able to get safely back into the camp where they received minimal punishment from their captors.

 

The book concluded with an epilogue that gave the history of prior attempts to climb Mt. Kenya, the first successful one occurring in 1899. I thoroughly enjoyed this book which I stumbled upon while looking for more books about East Africa. It gets my strong recommendation.