Bad omen that birthed pioneer teacher training school

Ms Minnie Watson lays the foundation for Thogoto church, 1922. [File, Standard]

Every garbage heap has its uses as long as the wind is blowing in the right direction, so wrote Nigeria's celebrated writer, Wole Soyinka. But what good can come out of a series of natural calamities that wiped out more than half the population?

When Kenya's pioneer of primary and boarding school, Minnie Watson, arrived in Kikuyu in December 1899, nothing in the world could have prepared her for the death, suffering and anarchy that awaited.