Never Forget Your Roots (A beginner’s guide…)

Martin Banjo
Aug 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Let me give you some advice bastard. Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.” Those are the words of Tyrion Lannister (if you don’t know who he is…Google is your friend) and in it are two lessons. Firstly, I once called my brother a bastard and i I remember the moment with great clarity. The setting is the stairwell of a large white colonial style house in Lagos, the time of day between when the good cartoons ended and bed time. We had just had a discussion(read:fight) which he won (read: he must have cheated) and so in a haze of frustrated fury I yelled “YOU’RE A BASTARD!”. I had just learnt the word and felt both satisfaction and the exhilarating high of the power of my expanding vocabulary. In response he let a smile wrap gently around his lips and it was a turning point in my early life when the words escaped his lips — “i am going to tell mummy you said that”. The lesson that day — plausible deniability is necessary in (childhood) warfare when there is a superpower who is yet to take sides.

Lesson two — we get born into all types of shhhituations and you shouldn’t forget your roots, whether you like them or not. For me it starts with being born into a multicultural home, is extended by a life spread over four continents and a marriage that carries me into a fifth. This makes me an international kind of ‘bastard’, the kind that is more at home talking about global differences than local politics (where is that?) and can only partially relate to the culture everyone assumes is mine. And while i am not prone to taking advice from TV characters, especially when they echo my father’s advice, I find a truth in Mr Lannister’s words. I can’t tell you how to wear your roots but just to suggest that you choose how you do, they’re always with you.

m.o.b

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