Cambodian woman found after missing for 18 years

[milliondollarchamp 0]

PHNOM PENH, Jan 19 (Reuters Life!) - A Cambodian woman who went missing in the jungle for 18 years before being found last week is struggling to adapt to life as a human and wants to return to the forest, police said on Friday.

 

"She prefers to crawl rather than walk like a human," said Mao Sun, a district police chief in the jungle-clad northeastern province of Rattanakiri where the girl's family live.

 

"Unfortunately, she keeps crying and wants to go back to the jungle," he said. "She is not used to living with humans. We had to clothe her. When she is thirsty or hungry she points at her mouth," he told Reuters by phone.

 

The girl, called Ro Cham H'pnhieng, went missing as an eight-year-old along with her cousin when they were sent to tend cows near the border with Vietnam.

 

Villagers believed they had been eaten by wild animals until a girl was caught last week by a logging team as she was trying to steal some food they had left under a tree.

 

With blackened skin and hair stretching down to her legs, she was unrecognizable apart from a scar across her back that allowed her father to pick her out.

 

After 18 years in the wilderness, police said she was able to say only three words: father, mother and stomach ache.

 

Villagers from the Phnong ethnic hilltribe minority believe the girl is still possessed by evil spirits of the forest. They

 

have brought in Buddhist monks to bless her and set up a round-the-clock watch on the family hut.

 

In December 2004, four families in the same province, which was crisscrossed by the paths of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War, emerged from 25 years in the jungle after fleeing the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that ousted the Khmer Rouge

[Wyld Cannon 0]

Bah, I already saw this movie with Jodie Foster.

 

Ro Cham H'pnhieng - She should write a book and change her name to Ro Cham Bo, I would.

[2GOLD 0]

Umm, so why don't they just let her go back to the jungle? If she was doing fine there, why shouldn't she be allowed to return and live there?

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Because it's unnatural and weird, and slightly cruel if you think about it.

[Brett Favre 0]

 

"Breast milk..you make my daaaay!"

[Guest Legalise Drugs and Murder]

Because it's unnatural and weird, and slightly cruel if you think about it.

 

All kinds of people live in the jungle. Sure, they eat grubs and their teeth are all fucked up, but they've been spearing fish and blowgunning birds and shit for millenia. Good for them. Less pollution, no taxes. Think of it as rainforest Amish.

[Guest Legalise Drugs and Murder]

Granted, I can't stand the fucking Amish. I'm all for jungle tribes, though.

[EricMM 0]

Their teeth are probably not so fucked up.

 

No sugar.

 

We didn't start getting cavities often until domesticated grains, and then rarely until sugar.

[Guest Legalise Drugs and Murder]

How did teeth look before dental hygeine products and clean water? Short of a photograph, there is no way you will convince me jungle jane has a set of 32 pearly whites.

[Wyld Cannon 0]

Because it's unnatural and weird, and slightly cruel if you think about it.

 

But hasn't Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and to a greater extent 1987's Walk Like A Man shown us that you can't put a tux on a wildchild and expect them to sip tea and talk about Paris Hilton?

[EricMM 0]

I really couldn't say.

 

But perusing the wiki says that the incidence of dental caries, or cavaties, is directly related to sugar consumption and grain raising in general.

[dubq 0]

Cavaties or not, she's still not cleaning her teeth. So "fucked up" could just mean lots of plaque and buildup which can turn into gingivitis among other nasty things.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

Because it's unnatural and weird, and slightly cruel if you think about it.

 

But hasn't Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and to a greater extent 1987's Walk Like A Man shown us that you can't put a tux on a wildchild and expect them to sip tea and talk about Paris Hilton?

 

 

You just won the thread for referring to Walk Like A Man.