Eggs to lay, chickens to hatch

Eggs to lay, chickens to hatch

Chris van Wyk, ISBN:9781770101739, R195.00, Order Now

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.
About the author
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.