Materi Girls: School where rules are unheard of but the girls turn out just right

Materi Girls Principal Sebastian Mbae with students at the flower bedecked fresh grave of the late Bro. John in the school compound

Touch times go away. Touch people don’t’ are the words stenciled in white on the wall in Bro John Koczka’s office at Materi Girls’ Centre, Tharaka Nithi County, and they cannot escape the notice of an inquisitive mind. They are simply hypnotising.

Why? Bro John is physically gone and the evidence is there in the form of a simple concrete tomb in the compound of the school he helped found, nurtured for 41 years and loved. But what he touched — the girls and women he held and helped become successful through education — lives on.