That's not an insult. That's Monday.

Remember how in elementary school it was so annoying when some kid would come up to you and say, “Spell Icup” and either you wanted to show off that you could spell or you were suspicious and hesitated and then accused of being unable to spell, but either way you ended up saying “i-c-u-p” and the kid would say, “You said, ‘I see you pee!’” You’d wonder how that made any sense because it should be “I see you peeing,” if anything, and if you actually were seeing someone pee, it should be that person who’d be embarrassed, but all you say is, “Well, now you’ve said it too.”

They’ve got kids like that in The Gambia too! Mamadou met one at school. The kid said, “say four,” so Mamadou said “four” (which in Gambian English in its Britishness is pronounced without an ‘r’) and the kid burst out “Ee foto!”

Mamadou was retelling this story to New Isatou and she said, “Hey, that’s an insult.”
 I thought “huh, that’s an insult I haven’t heard” until I remembered what foto means in Mandinka.

“And he said ‘say ten’ and I said ‘ten’ and he said ‘ten-o.”

Isatou thought for a little and said, “But that’s not an insult. That’s Monday.”