"No me molesto"

Wow, let's start from the beginning.

So right when I was thinking that life was actually becoming a bit routine: meetings with students, municipality members, NGO Frenchies, NGO Americans, distant and hard to get ahold of Peruvian NGO's (*cough*CARITAS*cough), life went and threw me a curve ball. A couple mornings past, I get out of my hostel (the pun is coming later...100pts if you can find it), with my hands full with a bit of food from the lunch and dinner from the day before. I'm still wiping the sleep from my eyes. The day was surprisingly cool, and the sun was just beginning to peak it's way through the narrow streets of Iquitos (en la ciudad). It seemed like any normal day in a large city in the Amazon. People were going about their business, bustling about with newspapers, random candy stands, and getting ready to turn on their boom boxes. Ah, yeah simple, boring, and comfortable. Breath in, hold it, think about trees falling in woods, one hand clapping, and exhale. That's how I felt this morning. Then it happened...Monkey Man erupted from my periph.

He came into my line of site almost like a boulder from an Indiana Jones movie. My shear surprise was probably not unlike Harrison Ford’s. Only problem...I'm not an actor who can escape to my dressing room. Monkey Man was clad in the same kind of pants you might see a white hippie yoga instructor wearing in southern India. Only thing is, the sides of the legs were cut in an unnatural way (longitudinally, and haphazardly), he obviously wanted to be "different". Monkey man wore nothing else. The draw string on his pants was untied, the only thing holding up his pants being the combined shear will of everyone walking down the street. His body was hairier than the usual homosapian. He didn't look like the typical Peruvian by any grandiose stretch of the imagination.

He was obviously well fed, but apparently he hadn't eaten this morning, and I must have looked like an awesome piece of gringo meat. That or he wanted the food I was carrying. Either way I was frightened.

He came at me with a few indistinguishable grunts at first, with his eyes bulging out, and hands held out in a fashion similar to the resting stance of Zangief, the Russian bear wrestler in Street Fighter 2. I quickened my pace. He quickened his. I turned my body and B-lined it up the street, while he kept his body square to mine, similar to how a person plays correct and proper defense in basketball. He obviously used to play forward on some Monkey Man basketball team. Team Tarzan.

"ooga, booga....coooooommmmmiiiiddddaa....." which I think stands for "ooga, booga, foooooooooooood,..." in monkey man. Either way I started to raise my voice, telling him “No, No, NOOOO”. He kept after me for about a quarter of a long block. Finally I remembered what a friend said to say if someone continued to bug me incessantly me on the street. Well at least I thought I knew the right thing to say--all that came out was "No me molesto!" Monkey Man stood there in his tracks, puzzled, brain moving a kilometer an hour (fast for our ancestral cousins). And this is where I left him. In a pile of confusion. “HA, showed him!” I thought.

I met David at the local Asai shop (where I am getting some of the best Asai in the world at a price that would make the hippie, yoga, health conscience type drop their workout mat, stop talking about how awesome their workout plan was, and move to Iquitos). Anyway, I tell him about my story with my knuckle dragging friend. His laughs escalated to their highest when I told him what I said to this man to get away. I was actually quite proud that I told him to “stop bugging me!” and he stopped. “no, no, dude”, David responded, “you didn’t tell him to stop bugging you, you told him to stop bugging yourself (as in, Jeff telling Jeff to stop bugging Jeff).”

No wonder Monkey Man was puzzled into a state of suspended animation.

So, yeah, my Spanish could use some work.