Jean brings her love of fashion into her videos, combining it with Việt Nam's quirks and charms. Photos courtesy of Jean Asienzo

William Gray 

Sometimes you fly thousands of miles to grow and rediscover who you were at the beginning of the journey. Jean Asienzo is a Ugandan content artist and vlogger living in Hà Nội with a growing educational- and comedy-focused channel. 

Jean embarked on a global career teaching English in 2012. It’s a journey that’s taken her from Africa to Myanmar and on to Việt Nam. 

She’s seen herself grow and develop, much like the countries she’s lived in. In the process, she’s gradually become a prominent influencer online, gathering more than 50,000 followers on her Facebook channel Jean’s World.

“I started my channel in 2016,” she says. “It began as a hobby. I would post something every now and then.

“I wanted to help girls in my hometown of Moyo District in Uganda,” she adds. “Where I’m from, girls have a problem with low self-esteem. They bleach their skin to make it lighter. I wanted to show them that they can be beautiful as they are.” 

“I started by taking photos. I really like fashion, so I would wear different outfits and post photos of them on my page. 

“Photos would get lots of likes and comments, but people didn’t share them much, so the page didn’t really grow. I started doing some videos and that started getting more attention.

“One video went viral, getting 9.2 million views, then another went really viral, and got about 40 million.”

“People like it when I do non-serious videos, they get the most shares,” she says. 

Jean on the job. Many of her videos are shot out in public, showing viewers what life is like in Việt Nam.

Indeed, Jean’s videos can be quite a laugh. In one of she brings a bucket and sponge out to a road and begins cleaning it, playing on a joke about relationships. The occasional passerby gives a curious look. 

“You have to be willing to do silly things in public,” she says. 

Nowadays Jean is based in Vinhomes Ocean Park on the outskirts of Hà Nội. She’s still working full-time but manages to put out a video or two a week. 

When asked about things she finds difficult as an African woman living in Việt Nam, she answers: 

“The traffic stresses me out a bit, that’s one of the reasons I moved to Ocean Park. In Uganda it’s more dangerous to drive - there are lots of accidents - but it’s not as noisy.”

“Sometimes it’s challenging because I’m different,” she says. “But I think Vietnamese people are very accepting. They always say things like ‘your skin is beautiful’.”

Jean started her channel to help the girls in her hometown of Moyo District in Uganda.

Jean is one of many expats from the African continent who have moved to Việt Nam in recent years, as the country continues to open up to the rest of the world.

“I found there were more Africans in Myanmar when I lived there, even with less in Việt Nam, the country is still very accepting,” she says. 

“I think that a lot of Africans are moving to Việt Nam because of the opportunities here, especially for teaching. Before you could only get accepted if you were from a native-speaking country and South Africa was the only place in Africa they would accept teachers from. It’s now opened up more and they accept people with certain IETLTS scores, so more people decide to come.” 

Jean recently started adding Vietnamese captions to her videos to relate more to the local audience. 

“People are always asking me on live streams if I can speak Vietnamese, which I can’t, I think they assume because of the captions that I do.” 

It has certainly become more common for expats in Việt Nam to set up YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and other channels to document their lives here and connect with a global audience. 

There’s something inherently interesting about two cultures coming together, and how each deals with the other. 

Jean represents one of many expat-vloggers in Việt Nam today putting their creativity to work and showcasing life here to people back home. 

Check her out via her Facebook page Jean’s World, and on her YouTube and TikTok pages Life of Jeannie. VNS