Los Monkeys
The four of us are sprawled on our stomachs on a hotel bed somewhere between the deep Ecuadorian Amazon and the airport in the Capital. It’s been a long day of travel, first by motorized canoe up the muddy Aguarico river, then packed inside our sunbaked 1965 Toyota Landcruiser. The family laptop sits in front of us on the sheets, and despite the heat, we’re crowded so close, we can almost feel the static excitement crackling between our hair. My brother, two sisters and I stare at the blue webpage with that long-forbidden word in the top left corner— “Facebook.”
My fingers hesitate on the touch-pad. The Ross Richers don’t do Facebook. It’s not that our parents have banned us from using it. Even they couldn’t say we’re too young at 18, 16, 14 and 12. It’s more like there’s an unspoken vow we’ve made as a family not to take that step into “the box”—a metaphor my parents’ use for dominant American culture. Some other ways my parents keep our family “outside the box” are by not sending us to school, not owning a TV, and not living in one place for more than a year at a time.
As the eldest of the four, I’ve taken the lead in this risky endeavor. I slide the cursor over the “create account” button and click. Slowly, I type my email address and birthdate into the blanks, along with a password none of us will be able to remember.
It’s time for the hard part: the naming of our profile. We’ve been brainstorming for at least a week now. We’ve considered everything from Toro Cadena (cowbell), to Gringos (white people), to Clowns—all names referring to inside jokes we hope our Cofan friends in Zabalo will appreciate. The problem we face is that there are two boxes on the screen, and they both need to be filled. Apparently, Facebook won’t accept a one-word name like “Monkeys”—the one we chose because it’s what our friends call us. It was the first English word we taught them when we started visiting the Amazon for our parents’ missionary work a few years ago, and it fits since we’re the only ones in the village with hairy arms and legs.
We brainstorm again and finally decide on a solution. Los Monkeys. I type Los into the first-name box and Monkeys into the second. I click the “create” button, and Facebook is now satisfied.
Our first friend on Facebook is Maicol Mendua; the second, Neyter Yiyoguaje; and the third, Michael Jaycob Mendua. For the first six months of our Facebook existence, these three—or rather two—comprise our entire friends list. Maicol, who has two Facebook accounts, and Tarquino, who goes by Neyter on Facebook, will be our only links to the Cofan world when we move back to the United States in the next week.
This isn’t the first time our family has picked up and moved across the globe. Like not using Facebook, moving is a part of the Ross Richer identity. My siblings and I are so used to hellos and goodbyes that we don’t cry into our hugs anymore. We don’t spend the weeks leading up to a move moping about how we’re going to miss our friends. In fact, if we can get away with it, we prefer not to make friends in the first place. It’s easier to leave somewhere if there’s no one left behind you’re going to miss.
We broke our rule of detachment in Zabalo. The first time we visited, we fell in love with the village kids. We didn’t understand their language, A’ingue, and since most Cofan children don’t speak Spanish, we communicated more through laughter than with words. Maybe that’s what we liked. In Zabalo, there were no awkward conversations like the ones we had come to expect when meeting other kids. Instead we built forts on the river bank, threw mudballs, and laughed as we exchanged new words: “Cu’si” for “monkey”, “chipiri” for “little”, “Mingue quida?” for “what happened?”
We returned to Zabalo many times in the next couple of years, and slowly expanded our friend circle to include the teens as well as the children. The first time Maicol tagged along to our house with his younger brothers, my sisters and I were mad because he interrupted our play. But soon Maicol became a friend and we joked and laughed with him as he introduced us to music by Ozuna, Nicky Jam, Luis Fonsi, and Justin Bieber. Tarquino, the Pastor’s son, didn’t come around as often as Maicol, but he was outgoing and goofy and my siblings and I enjoyed playing soccer with him on the weekends when he came home from the boarding school upriver.
Now our parents’ work is taking us to the United States for six months, and for the first time in years, my siblings and I are openly sad that we have to move again. “We’ll be back in time for Christmas,” we tell our friends. When Maicol asks for our Facebook info to stay in touch, we have no choice but to answer, “we don’t have Facebook yet, but don’t worry, we’ll get it.”
For the first six months, the only pictures on our timeline are our profile picture, and the cover photo—a far-off view of the new house Tarquino’s dad built for us. We have decided to get Facebook, but we will use it strictly as a means of staying in touch with friends in Ecuador. It is crucial that no one in the United States discovers our newly conceived identity. And with a name like “Los Monkeys”, it will only take a couple of lies here and there in answer to the “Do you have Facebook” question to keep our profile safely hidden.
We’re at our aunt’s summer house in upstate New York a couple weeks later, when we receive our first Facebook message. We gather to read it, making sure to hide the laptop from our cousins.
The message is from Maicol.
“Mmmmm como estan por aya chipiris monkeys?” it reads. How are you over there, little monkeys? We smile and eagerly continue reading. The child-like Spanish is almost incomprehensible, and the periods decorating the account at all the wrong places only make us grin wider.
“…fuimos a casa de ustedes y ayi. Estaba el. Monkey pequeño a dentro de. Tu casa y le pregunte. Q haces. Y dijo. Q estaba. Bailando en musica de despacito y nos dijo q entren y entramos y lo puso musica de Dimitri vegas.”
We read the message over and over again, and laugh because it’s such a ridiculous tale. A monkey inside our house dancing to “Despacito”—how did Maicol ever think of that? And we laugh because we feel so lucky to have friends among the Cofan. Maybe Facebook will help shorten the distance between us.
We play Despacito on YouTube, and imagine a monkey dancing to that song in our wooden house. The tin roof is rattling with the movement, and the floor boards are creaking. We laugh because of how absurd it is that it took the Cofan people of Ecuador to finally introduce us to Facebook. Almost as absurd as a monkey dancing to “Despacito.”