I grew up in a countryside in Vietnam in the early 1990s. Most of my childhood were spent at my grandparents’ when my parents went to work. Shortly after the country opened the economy in 1986 my grandparents were among the very first people to start a family business by building a brick kiln right in the house yard. The brick kiln, therefore, was a place of interest for news seekers from within and outside the country.
I remember at the age of 6 when my neighbor friends and I were playing hide and seek around the piles of finished bricks, the game came to an end earlier than normal when we spotted two white men from the far corner of the street approaching us. They were both holding a huge black camera- much bigger than the one our teachers used to take photos of us for the school profile once a year. I had always perceived photo shooting to be a special occasion when our teachers would have informed us a month in advance and our parents would rummage through our family’s shared wardrobe to get the best clothes so we would look the most beautiful in the photos. And there we were, our faces and clothes were covered in clay and brick dust when the two strange men appeared from nowhere and took photo of us. That left a 6-year-old girl me nothing but intimidation. I did not know what to do but stared at them. They caught our look so came over with a handful of candies and handed them to us. I turned and ran away, but still spotted one of them getting the camera and capturing the last shot of a small kid’s escape.
Later that day at dinner when my mother asked me about the incident (she surely must have heard from one of the kids), she accidentally added to my concern by saying “Maybe you will appear on the news in their country”. I was so worried about being seen as a dirty and poorly looking girl that I kept having bad dreams about it for a long time afterwards.
STORIES 