Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya. 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. And it happened again, he said, with his boss referring to all Kenyans as primates. Humiliated and outraged, Mr. Ochieng’ decided to record one of his boss’s rants, catching him declaring that Kenyans were “like a monkey people.” ...
Mr. Ochieng’ said he protested several times, but the monkey comments did not stop. “It was too much,” he said. “I decided, ‘Let me record it.’” The rant that Mr. Ochieng’ recorded came after a sales trip had gone awry. Mr. Ochieng asked his boss why he was taking out his anger on him. “Because you are Kenyan,” Mr. Jiaqi explained, saying that all Kenyans, even the president, are “like a monkey.” Mr. Ochieng’ continued that Kenyans may have once been oppressed, but that they have been a free people since 1963. “Like a monkey,” Mr. Jiaqi responded. “Monkey is also free.”
