Karfiguéla Falls do not plunge anywhere. The upper Comoé reaches the western edge of the Banfora Cliffs, in the far southwest of Burkina Faso. Instead of going over in one drop it spreads across a wide shelf and comes down as a staircase, dozens of small cascades working between terraces and ledges. The rock they run on is sandstone laid in fine dark and ochre bands. Early and late, low sun crosses that banding and cuts every step into relief, and in the dry months, with the water down to threads, the stone rather than the falling water is what you have come to look at. This is where the flat Sahel plain ends, and it is the first big drop the river makes.
Getting in is part of it. Vehicles stop short, and the last of the way goes on foot under a long corridor of mango trees and through kapok forest, deep in shade and loud with birds. There is no sign of the river until the rock shelf opens out at the end of the path. Rough steps cut into the stone climb beside the cascades, about fifteen minutes of them, to the calm basins at the very top where local families gather to swim. The water spreads out still and clear up there, above every ledge you climbed to reach it. What you find depends on the month. From June to September the rains swell the young Comoé and it crosses the full width of the rock the colour of red earth, heard before it is seen. That is also when the mango-avenue track turns to mud and the top pools are no place to swim. The sandstone stays slick near the water, and the river carries bilharzia, so a dip here is never entirely free. And this is the Comoé while it is still small. The same water has more than a thousand kilometres to run through Côte d'Ivoire before it reaches the Gulf of Guinea, and up here you can stand in it.