Cambodia's 'jungle woman' in hospital

[Kandy-Sugar]

Cambodia's 'jungle woman' in hospital

Cambodia's "jungle woman", whose story gripped the country after she apparently spent 18 years living in a forest, was hospitalised after refusing food, her father and a doctor said on Friday.

But the tale of Rochom P'ngieng, which has involved disputes over her real identity and how she spent her missing years, took a further twist when her father then removed her from the clinic against doctors' advice.


Rochom P'ngieng went missing as a little girl in 1989 while herding water buffalo in Ratanakkiri province around 600km northeast of the capital Phnom Penh.


In early 2007 the woman was brought from the jungle, naked and dirty, after being caught trying to steal food from a farmer. She was hunched over like a monkey, scavenging the ground for pieces of dried rice in the forest.


She could not utter a word of any intelligible language, instead making what Sal Lou, the man who says he is her father, calls "animal noises".


Cambodians described her as "jungle woman" and "half-animal girl".


Sal Lou told AFP by telephone on Friday that Rochom P'ngieng was admitted to the provincial hospital on Monday.


"She has refused to eat rice for about one month. She is skinny now.... She still cannot speak. She acts totally like a monkey. Last night, she took off her clothes and went to hide in the bathroom," Sal Lou said.


"Her condition looks worse than the time we brought her from the jungle. She always wants to take off her clothes and crawl back to the jungle," he added.


But he said in a later call that he had brought her home because it was too difficult to keep her from fleeing the hospital.


"We have to hold her hand all the time (at the hospital). Otherwise she would take her clothes off and run away," he said, adding that he would now appeal to charities to take over her care.


Doctor Hing Phan Sokunthea, director of Ratanakkiri provincial hospital, confirmed that Sal Lou had defied medical advice and checked her out of the hospital.


"We wanted to monitor her situation more, but we don't know what to do because the father already took his daughter out of hospital," he said.


The jungles of Ratanakkiri - some of the most isolated and wild in Cambodia - are known to have held hidden groups of hill tribes in the recent past.


In November 2004, 34 people from four hill tribe families emerged from the dense forest where they had fled in 1979 after the fall of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, which they supported.

I was amazed when I read this.

I feel really sad for the girl. She seemed to have adapted quite well in the time she was missing it seemed. I'm amazed at how long she survived for. =0

I really don't think after 18 years of living a certain way can be reversed. The most important years of her life were spent in the jungle.

I think that although she's been found, it doesn't necessarily make it right to deprive her of what she knows.

How did this guy even know that he was her father anyway?

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Donald Trump]

Cambodia's 'jungle woman' in hospital



I was amazed when I read this.

I feel really sad for the girl. She seemed to have adapted quite well in the time she was missing it seemed. I'm amazed at how long she survived for. =0

They found some Japanese soldiers something like 60 years after the end of WW2, so I suppose 18 years in the jungle is quite short in comparison. However the age of the girl is different and her ability to adapt is quite remarkable.

I really don't think after 18 years of living a certain way can be reversed. The most important years of her life were spent in the jungle.

I think that although she's been found, it doesn't necessarily make it right to deprive her of what she knows.

That's a fairly controversial issue, the British thought that they were bring civilisation to the peoples that they conquered. You can't inflict your own standards on other people, but this is a slightly different case, as her father would be in charge of making the decision. I doubt he'd want to release his daughter into the wild again.

Perhaps the Khmer Rouge have turned her into some sort of Manchurian Candidate and now she'll go and attack the leader of Vietnam.

 

[Shu]

The survivability is the thing that awes me. I mean even with the best equipment living in a jungle setting where you always have to be on your toes (insects, poisonous animals, carnivores.. etc..). Also in order to survive without equipment would be almost impossible for most common people. One would have to know a little Botany, what plants are edible and also know aquatic engineering, in order to purify ones water. The reason Americans get sick so easy from Mexico's water is because their system is not use to the unpurified water. So just imagine how one would survive in an extreme settingl like this lady did.

 

[Ayumi Hamasaki]

That is amazing. I mean, to able to survive in the jungle for eighteen years. I couldn't survive for one, I think, but eighteen, I would have stabbed myself with something pointy.

Of course, it's going to be really hard on the girl. I mean, 18 years of jungle life is bout to make you somewhat different then us, and the animal noises it said she made prove this. It will probably be really difficult for her to adapt, if she will be able at all.

It's almost like, to me, it would've been better if they had left her in the jungle, so that she was happy and at home.

 

[Apparent Amarant]

They found some Japanese soldiers something like 60 years after the end of WW2, so I suppose 18 years in the jungle is quite short in comparison. However the age of the girl is different and her ability to adapt is quite remarkable.

Yeah but I bet they had matured past adolescents before going in. If you are away from human civilization and intelligent human contact for long enough when you are a very young child you become a "feral human". You are rendered incapable of maturing mentally past the point of a chimpanzee. I'm not making this up I watched a documentary on it. Look up "feral humans" for a fairly interesting read or view. If you get to the information I saw it will be mostly on children who had no real human contact up until a certain point so there brains didn't develop correctly.

If you threw someone of the age of 14 in the jungle this wouldn't happen because there brain has already matured past the point it need to.

This girl will never be able to do live properly in our society or even speak a human language. It's not possible.

I know what I just said sounds like a bunch of BS. Please look it up before you call me a liar. It is true I swear.