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Otter tells of his experiences living in Khayelitsha while he was a journalism student and working as an intern for a Cape Town newspaper.  He provides vivid insights into the lifestyle, problems, sense of community and camaraderie he found in the primarily Xhosa environment of Khayelitsha (New House).

He expresses well his personal growth as a young white man through these new experiences, seeing his South Africa from the "other side" as a contrast to his growing up and family setting in the Eastern Cape.  He provides portraits of many residents and deeper descriptions of those he was closest to.

Otter includes his experiences of news coverage and writing through which he provided an inside view of life in the township for those in a totally different world only a few kilometers away in the isolated world they experienced, which had been enforced and protected during the Apartheid days.

He shares his own sense of growing awareness of his ignorance of the townships and the cultural and financial gap.  He comes to see and know the real people who live there, comes to share and enjoy their life, which he prefers in many ways.  He comes to regard the outside life he once knew as cold and largely artificial.

One of the great characteristics of the African traditional cultures he warmed to in Khayelitsha was the sense of community, sharing, generosity, acceptance and mutual concern within the close-knit community of the crowded township.

See related reviews and articles on this site:
Hilarious Insights from the Township
South African Spirituality
A View of Africa
Worldview, Ethnicity and Social Dynamics in African Politics

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OBJ

Initial reading notes written 18 September 2008
Finalized and posted 25 September 2008
Last edited 16 February 2009
Posted on Amazon 2 March 2009

Orville Boyd Jenkins, EdD, PhD
Copyright © 2008 Orville Boyd Jenkins
Permission granted for free download and transmission for personal or educational use.  Other rights reserved.

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