Chocolate Mono Niños

One of the best parts of travelling is meeting new people along the way. Talking with fellow travellers from far off places helps to widen our perspectives on the world. A few beers in a bar, a chat on the beach, some words shared on the street are the normal ways you get to know new people. Most people are friendly, personable and trustworthy. Enough with the BS.

A word of warning, beware the CHOCOLATE MONO NIÑOS!!! Or as I like to call them the brown monkey children. At first they´re friendly and cute, they just want to show you around town, talk about girls, maybe have a drink. But that´s their game, they start off slow not asking for much. Their big dark down syndrome eyes are inviting and friendly. Their emaciated third world faces are non-threatening. They´re sort of like ugly bush babies. So you buy one of them some lunch. After all he´s a nice guy, he showed you a sweet beach, the least you can do is return the favour with a $3 lunch. Big mistake! You see that´s just the beginning because Chocolate Mono Niños travel in packs and by feeding the leader you´ve just opened up a world of extortion. Much like feeding your pet dog at the dinner table treating your average 3rd worlder to a free lunch will keep him asking for more. You´ve now unofficially become a world food aid program all on your own.

Later they take you out fishing, not bad you think, you catch a few fish together and come back and cook them at your place. Seems fair, their boat your stove. Next night they´re back, this time no fishing, no nothing just your food and their mouths. Now they start dropping by at night, at first only every second day maybe for an hour or two. Pretty soon it´s every night. By now they don´t bother to ask if it´s o.k. for them to have a bite to eat, they just take it. They suck a bag of milk dry, eat your bananas, whatever´s around is fair game. They also take it upon themselves to return your food in scheisse form and clog your toilet with the huggest shit ever. And of course they don´t wash their hands before dinner. After all people this is Nicaragua, basic sanitation is for gringos. Piranhas aren´t this ravenous.

Also let´s not forget about the booze. There´s nothing like going out with these guys in the middle of the week for a little rum drinking. Only problem is that suddenly you find out that you´re providing booze for the whole neighbourhood. These guys reproduce asexually I swear. There were guys that we´d never seen before popping out of everywhere. They´d talk to you for a minute and suddenly you were amigos, two minutes later and you´re hermanos (brothers), by then half your rum is gone and now they´re hitting you up for a bag of peanuts or a new car. They seem truly hurt when you say no too. I mean how can you be so cruel to them after all these minutes of friendship. After all aren´t you hermanos? Now where´s that rum?

Once they´ve truly bonded to you, like the parasites that caused our diarhrea, they just never leave. They sleep over uninvited or else they show up early to make sure you didn´t run off on them. After all there´d be nothing worse than for them to lose their meal ticket.

There´s nothing quite like being woken up in the morning by the sounds of a CMN clawing at your window shouting son-of-a-bitch as loud as possible. Very peaceful. Muy tranquilo as the locals say. I´m beginning to wonder if any of these people really know what tranquility is. Between the constant pop music, dog barking, rooster crowing, loud speaker cars blairing, old men singing, dog fights, cat fights, pigs fucking, pigs being fucked (seriously, don´t ask) and random noises of every description I don´t think this place has ever had 3 consecutive seconds of quiet ever!

That brings me to my next topic, our CMN´s are about as loud as a pack of howler monkeys. They never ever shut up! Constantly blabbing on about chicas, toyas, sexo or chicas the life of a CMN is profound and complicated. In particular our 2 amigos, let´s call them dumb and dumber, are extra special. Originally they told us that they were painters, still haven´t seen them work a day yet and we´ve been here for 2 weeks. In fact their only ´work´seems to be picking up white chicks. I´m still not sure what any girl sees in a 110 lb 5´5´´ unemployed con artist. The Captain (another CMN) has worked at least a couple days since we´ve been here and he seems to be the most productive. He actually brought us rum one night!

As of right now dumb and dumber are camped out in our living room eating fish soup. I guess you could call it that, all they did was boil raw fish in a pot. Christ another one just entered our place. Dan and Rafer have abandoned me and now I´m out numbered 3 to 1. Thank God I´m not a malnutritioned CMN so I should be able to crush them all if need be. Maybe I´ll just do it for fun. ..hmmm... I´m actually starting to wonder if anyone would care if I just blugeoned them all to death. Nahhh...it´s not like they´re Chechnyans.

Love,

Erik