[dropcap]RUIRU[/dropcap], Kenya — Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″]
Not while growing up as an orphan in his village near Lake Victoria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Kenya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settlement at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya
Chinese employees helping passengers at the new Standard Gauge Railway terminal in Nairobi last year. Image Credit, Adriane Ohanesian for The New York Times.But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey.
It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said.
“‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates.
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