She was a student at the City University of New York’s Hunter College in Manhattan, studying towards her undergraduate degree at the time. She lived with host parents on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and, on the morning of 11 September 2001, took the train at 95th Avenue, heading to remedial English classes around 4th or 5th Street.

She was meant to get off at the Twin Towers stop near 3rd Street and then walk two blocks to her class. Wana says she was not particularly fond of the class and felt she should not have been forced to take remedial English, having gone to a private school in South Africa. Nonetheless, she complied.

As the train moved closer to her stop, she realised something was amiss. There was usually a rush of people getting on and off the train during the morning commute, but on this day, things began quietening around 20th Avenue. 

Still, the train captain made no announcements about what was happening above ground. When they reached the Twin Towers stop, passengers were told they would not be allowed to disembark. That was when the scale of what was happening began to dawn on her.

“Through the windows you could see nothing but smoke, and you could hear people screaming inside the train station. That’s when the panic came in.

Wana says she made a conscious decision to remain where she was. “I kept quiet and kept my music on. The safest place for me to be was underground in the train.”

Lerato Wana works today in student life, supporting students at the NWU’s Mahikeng campus. Photo supplied

When they were eventually allowed out of the train, she was confronted by scenes she says she will never forget. She tripped over fallen bodies, lost her shoes in the chaos, and ended up covered in soot as she tried to make her way through the streets of Manhattan.

Thousands of kilometres away, her parents in South Africa had no idea whether she was alive. Her host mother eventually rushed to campus to find her and took a photograph of Wana as proof that she was safe. The photograph was sent back to her parents in South Africa.

For Wana, surviving the attack was only the beginning of the trauma. What stayed with her was the feeling that she had almost lost her life while doing something she did not even believe she should have been doing in the first place.

New York

 “It’s knowing that I shouldn’t have been there that affected me negatively. I needed to do the healing with my people in Manhattan.” The experience also changed her relationship with New York.

Following her graduation, Wana moved to Bloemfontein to further her studies at the University of the Free State. She says she had no desire to live in another major city or rush to move abroad again.

Instead, the experience of being a foreign student in the United States left her with a deeper appreciation for what it means to be away from home when something goes wrong. 

“I embraced what South Africa gave me as an individual. I embraced the free will and the liberty to make certain choices. At the back of my mind, I believe being a foreign national is not the easiest experience.”

Vulnerability

It is an experience she has carried into her professional life. Today, Wana works in student life, supporting students at the NWU’s Mahikeng campus, including students who find themselves navigating university life far from home. Her own experience has given her a particular sensitivity to the vulnerability that can come with being a foreign student. 

For Wana, supporting international students is therefore about more than helping them navigate university rules, registration or accommodation. It is also about understanding that, for some students, the university may become their first point of support when they are thousands of kilometres away from their families.

Her experience on 9/11 showed her how quickly an ordinary day can become a crisis and how frightening that crisis can be when the people who know and love you most are on another continent.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, Wana says she still remembers the fear and confusion of being a young student in a foreign country, suddenly caught in an event that would change the world.

But she also remembers the people who helped her survive it. Through the varied counselling sessions held in New York in churches and schools alike, after the attack, she realised people experience grief and trauma differently: some people had lost loved ones, others had lost no one, and those in the middle, like her, were struggling to grapple with the feelings they were experiencing.

And perhaps that is why the memory remains relevant to the work she does today: because for students living far from home, having someone who notices, listens, and offers support can make all the difference.

OFM News/Olebogeng Motse dg

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