A trip to Sirigu, a festival, six hour wait and cold cabbage

Hello, i tried to write last week when i went to Bolgatanga but the man at the desk lied to us and told us the cafe was open on sundays, it wasnt.
We went to Sirigu last week, which is about an hour from Bolgatanga, but the whole journey is through dirt track and dust, so not only does it feel much longer but when you get there you are in immediate need for a shower. It was good though, its an arts center for women of the community who arent given any income by their husbands. They make pottery and sell it throughout the country at markets, (I bought a dish from there) the stuff is really impressive and really unique. Then after seeing where they make the pottery, you can spend a few cedi extra on a tour round local traditional houses, and they were good too. If the house had a picture of a snake on the outside, it means they have a python for protection.
The clothes had also arrived from the collection the Pre-prep and St Peters did for the orphanage, we spent hours sorting them into size and gender piles for all of the children. When we told them they were extatic, they had never had so many clothes. We had some that were too small so we gave those to the local children (who equally have nothing at all) and they were chuffed too. Ever since they have got the clothes, the girls have been lifting up their dresses to show people their pants, as they have never had any before, pants and just tied up pieces of material here. And the day we gave them the clothes, all the little girls showed up in their dresses (and socks with no shoes) they looked like they were going to a party not school, but it was obvious how much they all appreiciated the clothes.
In the past two weeks we also found another 2 scorpians, one in the room just above my suitcase and the other on the porch. I went really close to one to photograph it, thinking it was dead, but i acciently touched it with my camera and it went mad, so i was quite lucky. Last night I was bitten 43 times on my shins so I have been in a pretty bad mood all day. Deffinatly the worst thing about Ghana is the insects... there are so many and they are huge and everything bites. We went to a cashpoint earlier and were literally swarmed by little beetles wanting to get close to the light. And the other day when we walked back from tea we hjad to run back to the house as tiny little bugs dropped all over us (literally) it felt like hailstones. We spent ages picking them off us and out of our hair and I really really hated it.
We only worked on Monday this week because tuesday and wednesday (and today and tomorrow, just to finish off the week) were a muslim festival but I cant remember what it was called. The whole town was excited though, despite half of it being christian. Thats one thing that is really really good here; the religions get on so well, they enjoy each others differences, e.g our host told us to go and have a look at the festival so when we went down the muslims there were asking us to take photographs of them and inviting us to watch. That would never happen in England becasue people are much to weary of eachother. And whilst the service was going on the people whgo had overslept (a lot of people because no one has electricty/alarms) were running over but everyone was just smiling to greet them, no one seemed angry at eachother. The children also (all dressed up in their best clothes) just talked and played at the back, it wasn't too strict at all. The two orphans that took us to the festival were muslims and we said they could go and pray if they wanted to but they said no because they hadn't bathed.
Last night I started to ring home and one of the orphans Awulu, saw me and came over to see what I was doing. I told him i was speaking to my sister and he got really excited and wanted to speak too. So I put her on, she was pretty shy so didnt say much but mum told me tonight that she was excited. Awulu asked to see her so I showed him a picture and he looked at it and said 'I ring you but you do not speak to me, why? why? why?' It was really really cute. And James was chuffed, because after we gave him and another orphan some headphones and the ipod to play with and they were bouncing around to 'Gaslight Anthem' and 'Bob Dylan.'
The foods still the same, yam, spaghetti and rice... everyday. But ive lost a load of weight and weve been having quite a bit of fufu recently which i really really like. Yesterday we got excited becasue we were told they had bought us new vegetables, we were less excited when these new vegetables turned out to be cold and dirty cabbage...
Today was pretty stressfull. We got up early to have an early breakfast so we could leave early but no taxi came for 6 hours, so we just waited around. When we got a trotro in walewale, we headed onto the motoway and the driver had forgotton something to turned the trotro round (inthe middle of the road) and headed back before coming back again... But we are in Tamale at the moment and everything seems pretty good. Im looking forward to moving on now, seeing somewhere new We leave here in two weeks, and I think i will really miss the children but we'll keep writing and maybe one day i can comeback and visit them all again Im pretty scared that everyone will have forgotton me when I get back though, so if you are reading this then please remember me

Aliss