Since you didn't specify you need to use the default CentOS Python install, I would highly recommend using virtualenv to get the support you want. CentOS requires that old version of Python, and we have to work around it at my business as well.
Grab the latest Python, and build from source. Make sure any SSL devel libraries are installed through Yum.
./configure --prefix=/home/user/custompython
make && make install
Grab virtualenv.py from https://raw.github.com/pypa/virtualenv/master/virtualenv.py and run that script from your custom python install
/home/user/custompython/bin/python virtualenv.py -P /home/user/custompython/bin/python /home/user/pythonENV
export PYTHON_HOME=/home/user/pythonENV/
export PATH=/home/user/pythonENV/bin/:$PATH
pip install pymongo
Of course, adding the path modifications to .bashrc is helpful. Now you can install anything you want without worrying about the very old 2.4.3 that CentOS ships with. This is the exact setup I have with our CentOS 5.8 system, and it is very helpful.