Land of My Ancestors

I stared blankly at the young girl and stopped saying whatever I had been saying into my new shitty cell phone, totally nonplussed. She looked pretty enough and her obviously hand made signs were well written and properly punctuated. The young girl was sitting behind a fold out card table inside the cart area at my local grocery store. The sign was asking for donations so the young girl could re-connect with her roots/heritage by visiting a war torn poverty stricken area of the nation of Africa. It wasn't any more specific than that. 

This poor girl either thought she was from every country within the continent or had been grossly misinformed by a trusted adult who didn't know the difference grammatically. I hung up without saying goodbye, as is my habit, and approached the young girl, who appeared bored and disinterested. She was on her iphone and this immediately gave me pause causing me to doubt the voracity of her claim to need "donations."

"Why do you want to go to Africa? They have parasites there. The kind that can make you swell up like a bad piece of sausage before dying of internal hemorrhaging." I asked skeptical and slightly jealous her iphone hadn't been reduced to the functionality of an ipad by removing it's wireless data connectivity.

"I don't, my parent's think it will be good if I visit my country of origin." She answered while texting someone. 

"I don't think you know what that means. America is your country of origin. You were born here." I responded becoming more jealous when I saw her wicked sweet phone cover was two tone and sparkled if you held it in the right light.

She frowned at me and rolled her eyes "No, stupid, like, the country where my ancestors are from, Jesus."

"Were from, if they're your ancestors they're dead and cannot BE from anywhere. Only from somewhere and that's a really awful attitude to have for someone whose hoping to receive money from strangers based on a ploy to tug at their heart strings. Bitch." I said and then walked away trying mightily to resist the urge to snatch her superior iphone out of her hand and run for it. 

I could hear her asking Siri loudly for the best way to get flaming homo's to "leave you the fuck alone."

Such language for a racial pilgrim aspiring to return to the mother land someday.