Thai woman Jaeyaena Beuraheng (C) is greeted by her friends outside her family home in southern Thailand's Narathiwat province.
Photo: Reuters
February 8, 2007
A Thai woman who was lost for 25 years after catching the wrong bus home was finally reunited with her family thanks to simple song.
The last time Jaeyaena Beuraheng saw her seven children was in 1982 when she left the southern Thailand province of Narathiwat on one of her regular shopping trips across the nearby border with Malaysia.
She disappeared, and police later told her family that she had apparently been killed in a traffic accident.
In fact, Jaeyaena had simply taken the wrong bus home - an error that would have been easy to fix except that she only speaks the local dialect of Malay known as Yawi, according to officials at the homeless shelter where the 76-year-old has lived for two decades.
On her way back from Malaysia, she mistakenly hopped on a bus to Bangkok, some 1,150km north of her home in Narathiwat province.
Unable to read Thai and speaking a language few Thais can understand, she again took a wrong bus, this time to Chiang Mai, another 700km further north.
There she ended up as a beggar for five years, until she was finally sent to a homeless shelter in the central Thai province of Phitsanulok in 1987.
An official at the shelter said she was known as "Auntie Mon" because her speech sounded similar to the language of ethnic Mon living along the border with Burma.
But still no one could understand her, until last week when three health students from Narathiwat arrived on an exchange program to research the problem of homelessness at the shelter.
She sang a song for the visitors, one that the staff at the shelter had often heard but never understood.
"She sang her same old song, one that nobody could understand until those three students from Narathiwat told us that she was singing in Yawi, a Malay dialect," the official said.
"So we asked them to talk to her and find out if she had relatives," the official said.
Jaeyaena told the students that she had a Malaysian husband and seven children, recounting her entire story of the bus and how she had become lost in northern Thailand.
Her shocked family sent her youngest son and her eldest daughter to meet her and bring her home on Tuesday, the official said.
"She remembered all of her children's names. But at first she couldn't recognise her youngest son, but she recognised her eldest daughter," said the official, who was at their reunion.
Her children have taken her back to their family home in Dusongyo village, in a remote corner of Narathiwat.
The village chief said she had arrived home yesterday, some 25 years after she left to go shopping.
Re: Missing for 25 years after getting on wrong bus
Alhamdulillah, she has back to her family.
However, there is something that make me dont understand. She was 20 years in homeless shelter. But, was there no program that send back a homeless or beggar to their origin home ? and why there was no someone who tried to know where was she came from ?.
I think, if those three health student never visited that homeless shelter, she never went back to her family.
Re: Missing for 25 years after getting on wrong bus
format_quote Originally Posted by ardianto
Alhamdulillah, she has back to her family.
However, there is something that make me dont understand. She was 20 years in homeless shelter. But, was there no program that send back a homeless or beggar to their origin home ? and why there was no someone who tried to know where was she came from ?.
Because she only speak in Pattani Malay and none of the people at the shelter understood the language...
format_quote Originally Posted by ardianto
I think, if those three health student never visited that homeless shelter, she never went back to her family.
Maybe because she was tested by Allah... and she was still remembering Him for all 25 years.....
Re: Missing for 25 years after getting on wrong bus
format_quote Originally Posted by Raudha
oh: This is such a sad story. Imagine living 25 years of your life thinking that you mother has passed on .
.
In this news, it was said that the police told her family that she died in a traffic accident... I've read in another news... the police told her family that she was hit by a train...
If the police "knew" that she died .... shouldn't they bring back her corpse to the family or ask the family to pick up her body?
Re: Missing for 25 years after getting on wrong bus
Thai woman tells of 25-year detour
DUSONGYO (Thailand), Feb 9: A Thai mother who was lost for 25 years after catching the wrong bus home has spoken of her ordeal after being reunited with her family thanks to simple song.
The last time Jaeyaena Beuraheng saw her seven children was in 1982 when she left south Thailand on one of her regular shopping trips across the border to nearby Malaysia.
She never returned, and police later told her family that she had apparently been killed in a traffic accident.
In fact, Jaeyaena had simply taken the wrong bus home -- an error that would have been easy to fix except that she only speaks the local dialect of Malay known as Yawi, according to officials at the homeless shelter where the 76-year-old has lived for two decades.
“I didn't tell anybody where I was going on that day, because I went there quite often,” she said, crying as she spoke.
She was heading home from her shopping trip when she mistakenly hopped on a bus to Bangkok, some 1,150 kilometres north of her home in Narathiwat province.
In Bangkok, unable to read Thai and speaking a language few Thais can understand, she again took a wrong bus, this time to Chiang Mai, another 700 kilometres further north.
There she ended up as a beggar for five years, until she was sent to a homeless shelter in the central Thai province of Phitsanulok in 1987.
“I thought I would die in Phitsanulok. I thought about running away many times, but then I worried I would not be able to make it home. I really missed my children,” Jaeyaena said.
Officials at the shelter said that she was known as “Auntie Mon,” because her speech sounded similar to the language of ethnic Mon living along the border with Myanmar.
But still no one could understand her, until last week when three health students from Narathiwat arrived on an exchange programme to research the problem of homelessness at the shelter.
She sang a song for the visitors, one that the staff at the shelter had often heard but did not understand.
“She sang her same old song, one that nobody could understand until those three students from Narathiwat told us that she was sing in Yawi, a Malay dialect,” the official said.
“So we asked them to talk to her and find out if she had relatives,”official said.
Jaeyaena told the students that she had a Malaysian husband and seven children, recounting her entire story of the bus and how she had become lost in northern Thailand.
Her shocked family sent her youngest son and her eldest daughter to meet her and bring her home on Tuesday, the official said.—AFP
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oh: This is such a sad story. Imagine living 25 years of your life thinking that you mother has passed on
.
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