Media-spurned Jungle Girl sings in strange tongue
By Sam Rith and Cat Barton
The naked, emaciated woman captured in a Ratanakkiri jungle on January 13 and believed to be Rochom P'nhieng, a member of the Phnong tribe who vanished in 1989, has ended months of silence in an unexpected way, her presumed father, Sal Lou, told the Post on March 19.
"Last night P'nhieng sang a few songs in a Vietnamese ethnic minority language," he said. "She sang in P'hna language, which belongs to a Vietnamese ethnic minority who live only in Vietnam."
Lou, who speaks Vietnamese but not P'hna, said P'nhieng's singing had made him reconsider how his daughter had spent her time outside of society.
"Now I can say that during the time my daughter was away from me she stayed with P'hna ethnic minority on the Vietnam side of the border," he said.
But the implications of P'nhieng's foreign linguistic knowledge may not be properly investigated. Since the press corps' interest in P'nhieng waned, the Lou family have been left alone by media and medics alike, Lou said.
"I recorded what she sang [but] nowadays no one comes to visit or do any observations over my daughter any more," he said.
The lack of medical observation is setting back P'nhieng's recovery, said Professor Ka Sunbaunat, Dean of Psychiatry at the University of Health Sciences in Phnom Penh.
"She needs to be observed by a psychologist or a psychiatrist," he said. "During eighteen years in the jungle she would have experienced a lot of trauma. There is also the problem of starvation. We have to observe to understand what problems she has and be able to help her in an appropriate way. Without observation we cannot help her."
P'nhieng could be experiencing culture shock following her re-entry into society, so observation is essential if her real psychological, social or cognitive problems are to be identified, Sunbaunat said.
Sunbaunat recommended that P'nhieng be returned to the jungle to start building an understanding of her habits and behavior while living outside of society.
"At the moment, I have no idea why she might be speaking in P'hna," he said. "These kind of questions are why we should take her back to the jungle and observe her."
P'nhieng's motor skills seem sufficient, but her linguistic abilities have confused many in the sleepy hamlet of Phsom, O'Yadao district, Ratanakkiri.
"She uses a few mixed up words of P'hna, Krung, Chhrea, and Jarai [Cambodian and Vietnamese minority languages]," said Mao Sann, O'Yadao district police chief. "It is very difficult to tell if she speaks any real language."
Although P'nhieng still cannot talk to the family that has adopted her - they speak the minority language of P'hnong - she sometimes seems to understand what they say to her, said Lou.
"She can draw pictures," he said. "Sometimes she speaks in Chhrea and P'hna and laughs alone."
Lou reported P'nhieng had such bursts of semi-incomprehensible chatter immediately after she was first captured. The family still believes she is speaking to invisible jungle spirits.
Pen Bonnar, Adhoc coordinator in Ratanakkiri, said it was hard to tell whether P'nhieng had been alone or with others during her time outside of society, as he had minimal information from her family.
"My team visited P'nhieng on March 21 but said that she had not changed much since they last saw her two months ago," he said. "She still lives like a jungle woman and she still cannot speak."
