Nguyen Van Vinh - a veteran Reuters cameraman in Hanoi

I always looked forward to seeing Reuters cameraman, Nguyen Van Vinh, on visits to Hanoi, and sometimes Ho Chi Min City, in the late 1990s to 2012.  Vinh, who died in Hanoi on November 24, used to take time to instruct young, Vietnamese journalists on Reuters Foundation training workshops when I was in charge of the Foundation’s training programmes.  The young journalists revered Vinh and he loved sharing his knowledge and expertise.

Vinh used to take me on a mandatory visit to the Foreign Affairs Ministry to thank them for giving us permission to run the workshops.  We travelled on Vinh’s motorcycle because it was so much quicker and he sometimes took me, riding pillion, to nearby villages to buy silk bedspreads direct from people’s homes.  I still have some.

Another memory of Vinh was his interesting English vocabulary.  When I asked him how he learned English, he said he had found an English language manual during the time that speaking English was discouraged, in north Vietnam, as the enemy’s language.  Vinh told me that for years he listened to the BBC World Service News Report in English on his radio.  He had to do this secretly at the same time every day.  Because he could not practice his spoken English, he didn’t know if his pronunciation was correct.  So, he would transcribe the BBC reports and then record himself reciting the news on a little tape recorder to check his pronunciation against the radio reports. All in secret and for years.

It makes me even more ashamed not to have mastered a second language.

Vinh will be greatly missed by his family, friends and all the journalists who he taught and mentored over the years. ■