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.
Amazing sia 
