A Spanish psychologist traveled to see Cambodia's "jungle woman" yesterday in hopes of evaluating her condition after recently being discovered naked and unable to speak after apparently spending nearly two decades alone in the wild.
Hector Rifa, a doctor of psychology from Spain's University of Oviedo, said he wanted mainly to make sure the woman was treated properly for what appears to have been a traumatic experience.
But it was also possible he could find clues to the woman's true identity -- whether she is indeed a local girl who went missing in 1988, as claimed by a family in northeastern Cambodia who has taken her in as their long lost daughter.
Rifa was driving yesterday from Phnom Penh with hopes of completing the 13-hour journey to where she is staying in Rattanakiri Province's Oyadao district.
Telltale scar
The family of a village policeman there, Sal Lou, said they are certain the woman is Rochom Pngieng because of a scar they can recognize on her right arm. The girl disappeared while tending water buffalo when she was eight years old.
With no other evidence supporting the claim, however, her actual identity is a mystery to other people, who speculate she may just be a troubled person who became lost much more recently in the jungle.
In any case, her inability to communicate and evident attempts to escape from the family that has given her shelter indicate she is in a difficult psychological situation.
"We need to make an evaluation of the situation because until now nobody was taking care" of her, said Rifa, who has been working in Cambodia on health promotion for indigenous people in the province over the past four years for the Spain-based group Psychology Without Borders.
He said he thinks the woman's case may not be anything more extraordinary than that of any other person having difficulty adapting to normal life after being lost in the jungle for an extended period.
No jungle spirits
"It is not extraordinary ... or anything coming from another world," he said, speaking by phone from a car taking him up to the northeast.
Many superstitious villagers have expressed concern that the woman may be possessed by a jungle spirit.
"From the point of view of psychology, I suspect that this is like for us, if we have stayed one week in the forest and came back to the world, you are a little out of it. So if we have stayed 18 years out of the office or of the world, when we come back we need some time" to readjust, he said.
On Monday, two Cambodian human rights groups expressed fear that the woman may be suffering from the spotlight cast on her since she emerged from the wild and offered to provide any necessary medical and psychiatric treatment.
Curious villagers and journalists have flocked to see the woman, who was found on Jan. 13 walking like a monkey out of the jungle, patting her stomach when hungry and using animal-like grunts to communicate.
Rifa said the woman was not in any sense a patient yet.
"The important thing is to try help the family, if they don't know how to manage [her],'' he said.
Oyadao district police chief Mao San, meanwhile, said yesterday that the investigation into the woman's saga had "hit a dead end" because the woman cannot speak.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS