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Posted on : Oct 8, 2011

BABA'S FANTASTIC FLUTE

- A tribute to the elevating life of late Dr. Victor 'Krishna' Kanu

Part 4

“In August 1986, Victor was one of the Sathya Sai faculty members conducting the Sathya Sai African Conference on Education in Human Values and Community Services in Accra, Ghana,” Mr. Kishin Kubhchandani shares and adds, “He gave an excellent account in the African context. He was blessed by Swami to conduct such workshops in Nigeria (two in Lagos and one in Ibadan), Kenya (Nairobi), Zambia (Ndola), Zimbabwe (two in Bulawayo) and South Africa.”

“Go To Zambia” - Baba

The response was tremendous and Education in Human Values, thus became the mission of Victor's life. He kept visiting Puttaparthi often to seek Baba's guidance about this programme and Baba too always gave him special audience and clear instructions about taking this movement forward. However when Victor came to Baba in 1989, He had something else in store for him that just blew Victor away. This was how it unfolded in Victor's words:

“One day, in July 1989, when we came to Baba, He called us for an interview and said: 'Go to Zambia and spread My message of Love through schools - build a school.' We had briefly been to Zambia before to conduct a workshop for three weeks, that’s all - we didn’t know anybody there. But He was very clear: 'Go there and build the school, and spread My message of Love.'

“And when we were about to come out of the interview room, Genevieve was a little bewildered, so she turned around and asked: 'But Swami, where are we going to get the money from?' Baba said: 'Sell your house and use that money to build the school, and if that is not enough, borrow from the bank!'

“Being a Christian, I was reminded of the story of Jesus Christ and the rich man who went to Him and said: 'Master, I have done this and that… what else can I do to redeem my life?' And Jesus said: 'Sell all that you have, give to the poor and follow Me.' And as soon as Jesus said that, this man ran away! I thought about that and I knew this was a test. If Baba wants to create anything, He can build it anyway. He can produce money and construct it. But why did He say we should sell our house? This was a test!

“So we were very happy. In fact we felt extremely fortunate that God should ask us. What was in the Bible was being repeated. And, this was how we went to Zambia. We left London on December 22, 1989, after we had packed all our things; of course, we could not sell the house straight away because it takes time to finalise these things. We had some savings and insurance and cars; we sold all of these and even window curtains, and pots and pans, because Baba said 'leave nothing!' In other words He wanted us to cut the bridge!

“That’s how we went to Zambia. We were in a strange country but with faith in Him, it took us eighteen months to build this school. He said: 'Build it all!' It had 24 classrooms at the time. This was how we started the school in Zambia - the first Sathya Sai School outside India.”

Zambia is located in the south of the African continent. It is among the world's poorest nations. Even now in 2011, nearly 70% of Zambians live below the recognized national poverty line and most children drop out of school after Year-7 because they cannot afford the fees. Imagine the situation more than 20 years ago. In 1989, Baba directed Victor to go to Zambia.

Sai Directs the School to be Started Not in the City but in the Poorer Area

Now, born and brought up in Seirra Leone, a small nation in West Africa, Victor was almost as unfamiliar with Zambia as he was with India. That was why he called it a 'strange country'. So how did he go about building the school in this 'strange' but needy country? What were the challenges? And how did Swami guide him during all those trying years? Victor had wonderful tales to share:

The Sathya Sai School of Zambia under construction

“Well, first of all, the question was about locating the site for the school. The field expert wanted us to build it in the heart of the city. But there was another area in the middle of the township. So I sent Genevieve to Swami to ask Him in which of the two sites should we locate the school. Baba said: 'Go to the township - that is a poor area.' That was in fact a greatly disadvantaged place with no electricity or water supply; even the roads were very rough. We selected that spot. Of course, the situation there is a bit different now; the roads are relatively better and there is some water.

The School started as a twenty four-classroom building in a backward area of the town in 1991

“My problem was we had never built anything there. And we didn’t have enough money to hire a contractor; so I did the building myself. In other words, I got the master builders from the village itself - the men who were employed by the companies. Generally, when these corporates get contracts, they employ these people and pay them very little, retaining the bulk of the money for themselves. I brought these people and worked with them 12 hours a day. I learnt a lot about how to build houses. Now, I can construct many; in fact I did build the institute (Institute of Sathya Sai Education) we have there!

“Doing up the school was not easy at all; sometimes I had to fly to Lusaka (capital of Zambia) from Ndola to get materials such as bolts or nuts. But we overcame all these difficulties. We were just too happy that we had been asked by God to start a school. Our faith was so strong that we never doubted; we were just happy to do His work. We felt this was a wonderful opportunity given to us to take Swami’s mission to Africa, especially the mission of education.”

The Sathya Sai School of Zambia Achieves the 'Impossible'

Dr. Kanu and his wife receiving the prestigious Business Initiative Directions (BID) award at the 22nd International World Quality Commitment (WQC) Convention in Paris held on May 30, 2005. Go here to read the full account.

That he was specially chosen by the Divine to work for His education mission always thrilled Victor immeasurably. He dedicated his life completely for this cause because of two reasons. One was His great love for Swami and the second was his deep conviction that Baba's education in human values programme is the only panacea for the troubled world, especially for the African continent. So he went about implementing these principles in the new school which he called the Sathya Sai School. In fact the first time the locals heard the words 'Sathya Sai' was when they saw the name written on the number plate of a second-hand van that Victor bought for the school. Slowly, they figured that it referred to a holy man in India by the name Sathya Sai Baba.

Baba had directed Victor: “Study the system, build the school in one year, and start with three classes". Thus even though major construction work commenced on June 10, 1990 by June 1991 the school, set in fourteen acres of beautiful grounds, was open to the public for admissions. Initially there were three primary classes, and also three secondary classes for boys who had failed in their grade 7 national examination. But why failed students for the secondary school and what were the resulting challenges? Victor explained: “It was easy to start the primary school because the children were many. You only had to blow the whistle and they would come running. But it was difficult to begin the secondary school because to start this, the student must have completed their primary school education and passed well.

Their happiness shows! The ebullient tiny tots of the Zambia School

“Our primary school students were taking their public exams but we were not listed. This was a national examination and they didn’t know us. When the results came out, we had no candidate who had passed. We, therefore, had to go to the Minister of Education to look at those numbers that were below the cut-off points, that is, the failures. We pondered: 'Could we take the failures?' Because those who had passed had been given places but the others did not know where to go. So we selected candidates from among this basket of unfortunate ones and brought them to our school. People thought we were crazy. They said: 'How can you take failures to the secondary school? These are unteachables; they are difficult and retarded.' We said: 'We will try.'  

“And it was these boys of the secondary school that made the school famous because after two years, when they took the grade 9 exam, which was a national examination, their grades were the highest in the country.”

The School has been creating beacons of character out of 'social rejects' for close to two decades now

The first national results for Grade 9 produced 99% passes with 30 distinctions, and in subsequent years there have been 100% passes and over 50 distinctions.