My setup is:
linux + Ruby 1.9 + rails 2.3.8 + mongodb + mongo_mapper
I followed http://railscasts.com/episodes/194-mongodb-and-mongomapper, that everything is OK
Please add the following lines in your environment.rb .
Encoding.default_external = Encoding::UTF_8 Encoding.default_internal = Encoding::UTF_8
The problem will be solved.