| Agnes,
the Van Wyks' Zulu domestic worker, had a special friendship with young Chris
in the late sixties to early seventies. He would defend her whenever she came
to work with a babalaas on a Monday morning and made a mess of the cleaning. In
turn, Agnes never told on Chris when he played truant from school.As the years
passed, the two grew closer, swopping stories about coloureds and Zulus, life
in Riverlea and Soweto, pass laws, politics and falling in love. She taught him
to count in Zulu and he promised to teach her to read in English.Whenever the
clock ran against her, Agnes would stop almost in mid-sentence, grab a broom or
cloth, and declare: 'I have to rush. I have eggs to lay, chickens to hatch.'What
an odd, ungrammatical thing to say, Chris often mused. But many years later, he
played a CD by Louis Jordan, a 1940s American jazz singer, and it all became clear.EGGS
TO LAY, CHICKENS TO HATCH is Chris van Wyk's second childhood memoir about growing
up in Riverlea and his colourful interactions with the men and women who lived
the African proverb that 'it takes a village to raise a child'. But mostly it
is the story of a wonderful friendship between a young coloured boy and a Zulu
woman.
Chris van Wyk was born in Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto, in 1957, and
was educated at Riverlea High School in Riverlea, Johannesburg. He lives in Northcliff,
Johannesburg, where he works as a full-time writer.
In 1979 he won the Olive
Schreiner Award for his poetry collection It Is Time to go Home, and in 1997 he
was awarded the Sanlam Prize for the best South African short story 'Magic'.His
childhood memoir Shirley, Goodness & Mercy, published by Picador Africa in
2004, became a South African bestseller, selling over thirteen thousand copies
to date. It was also turned into a successful play, performed in 2007 at the Baxter
Theatre in Cape Town and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.In 2009 Van Wyk abridged
Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, a storybook (illustrated
by Paddy Bouma)for young children. |