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Terrorism at home teaches many
lessons abroad
Photo provided |
Photographed at the southernmost
tip of South Africa, Eric Steiner is trying to make the world
a better place, one friendship at a time.
|
By Tom Campbell
Purdue senior Eric Steiner was standing in the shallow
end of a deep conversation with South Africa's Minister of Home Affairs,
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, when he first heard of the events of Sept. 11.
Through lots of persistence and a little bluff and
bluster, Steiner had gained admission to South Africa's Second
Economic Roundtable Sept. 11-12 in Cape Town.
Representatives of Daimler Chrysler, IBM, Accenture,
Zurich Insurance and others paid $1,500 to attend the strategic forum
for business leaders and policy makers. Steiner, an agricultural economics
major who was participating in his third study abroad stint, scraped
together the $170 student rate for the chance-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to learn from the bluest of South Africa's blue chip companies and the
leaders of the nation's political machine.
Buthelezi was talking to him about his nation's "brain
drain," but Steiner's mind had already started to wander and wonder.
A conference staff member had just broken the news of the attacks on
the World Trade Center, half a world away.
The Berne, Ind., farm boy now found himself literally
rubbing elbows with the movers and shakers of South African business,
huddled around a hotel television, watching the ghastly details unfold
on CNN.
"An otherwise excellent experience became horrible.
The realization of what was happening knocked the wind out of me and
I had to sit down," Steiner says. In retrospect, Steiner learned
more about himself that tragic day than he ever could have learned about
the business world.
"The news spread like wildfire. As an American,
I felt tremendous pressure to appear strong and self-assured to people
I didn't know," Steiner says.
"I had to deliberately ignore and walk away from
inflammatory questions and comments I overheard on the street and on
campus that made me very emotionally upset. If I had engaged, I know
I would have made the situation worse."
For two days, Steiner spent a lot of time by himself,
sorting his thoughts, listening to the news.
"Loneliness can encompass your being, as you
watch the television in disbelief as the events unfold," Steiner
says.
"Over the next couple of weeks, as if in
a wake for a funeral, people who are close to you, as well as strangers,
in an attempt to reach out and lift your burden, say very inappropriate
things. Not because they intend to hurt you,
but because they just don't know how to help you."
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