‘coᶇ-coᶇ’

This must be Mandinka for ‘knock-knock’. It is what people say when they knock on your door and what the small children say as they walk into your house!

Recently I cut up an old mosquito net and hung it from the front door so that when I’m inside the house (cooking, working etc) and it’s really hot, I’m able to leave the door open.

Unfortunately to the children on my compound this seems to mean that my house is ‘open’ and they just walk in without even bothering to say ‘coᶇ-coᶇ’!

I even saw little Kaddy wrapping herself round and round in my net as though it was an additional toy that I’ve left out for them!

Obviously I’ve had words but when my words are in English and they only speak Mandinka it can get quite tricky. I say ‘hani’ a lot (that means ‘no’) and then I usually repeat the action saying ‘hani’ again which they think is hilarious! They know!!!!

How can you tell this lot off?!!