From atop the cliffs of Takalédougou, many glories can be beheld. Sugarcane fields, cashew orchards, cassava fields, and rolling hills beyond. But the cliffs themselves are also worthy of attention. There be crags and grottoes so enormous that a village councilor once told us the whole 2000-person village could fit into a special "cachette" cavern if trouble were ever to happen upon this peaceful region.

But come late August and the last hurrah of rainy season, the deluge starts coursing off the cliffs. Overnight, waterfalls start popping up every which where. As my volunteer work winds down, I've been increasingly putting on my Indiana Jones hat and pioneering solo and team expeditions to take photos. To bring you these photos, I've risked life and limb trudging through marshlands and dodging booby traps, such as low tree limbs, and ferocious beasts, such as squirrels.


Waterfall number one, pictured on the right, is really far away and I would have had to machete my way through a few football fields of overgrown underbrush to reach it. It's barely visible in this low-quality picture, but to me it resembles the waterfall from Pixar's "Up." If there were any houses here flying on helium balloons, I didn't notice them. Below this paragraph are three pictures of waterfall number two.



Waterfall number three, tucked away in the crevasse, required that I in my gym shorts and camera trudge through a family's field while they were working. They were fairly forgiving, playing it off like it's something that happens every day out in the wilderness.


The last waterfall has special significance for the village. Every year in mid-August they have an all-day culture party atop it. People drive in from all across the country to drink, dance, and watch performances atop the raging rapids. Tana and I first visited the infamous Cascades of Takalédougou back in dry season in early 2011. To get there, you must scale one of the many irrigation pipelines that the sugar corporation SOSUCO uses. Our courtyard family members, Fatouma, Mogomake, and little Natagoma, accompanied us one foggy day to the summit where there was barely a trickle of a waterfall.




Under stormy skies, we came again recently when the scenery is much more lush. You can see the highway and then sugarcane fields in the distance.




This time when we came, we brought some friends: volunteer Barry, Fernando (a Portuguese organic farming researcher), Daouda (Fernando's friend), and volunteer Anne. Barry set his camera in a tree on a timer, then barely made it into the picture.



After waterfall hunting, we all made some fajitas, traded movies, and then went to see a talent competition at the local bar.