Alain Bonny knows his mother survived the earthquake in Haiti, but he doesn't know where she is staying right now. Nevertheless, the American college student is going to resist searching for her when he leads a group of students into Haiti in May.
"I'm dying to go to Port-au-Prince right now," said Bonny, 22, a Pennsylvania State University senior in chemistry who lost three cousins in the January 12 earthquake.
He was told that his mother and other family members moved "to the countryside," but he doesn't know whether she's in a house or under a tarp.
Because Penn State's Project Haiti is a student-led organization without chaperones, Bonny is responsible for all 25 people on the trip, "and I don't feel that [searching for his family] is the best course of action for us."
Bonny said he'll go back on his own during the summer "to do what I can in Port-au-Prince and to seek out my family."
Project Haiti had planned to visit the Maison Fortune orphanage near the central town of Hinche during spring break in March, but the earthquake forced the group to wait until the week between final exams and graduation.
"It never occurred to me that I shouldn't go. It made me more determined to go," said Penn State psychology senior Liz Stock, 21, of Reading, Pennsylvania.
"Originally the plan was to go over spring break, and I'd never had an interest in going anywhere where it was just about lying around and partying, and that's not me at all," she added. "So I wanted to do something that would actually be worthwhile over my break."
Stock's roommate, Kelly Songer, 21, of Emporium, Pennsylvania, desires to bring hope and encouragement to Maison Fortune.
Songer, a senior business student, said she wants "to go there and help children and to see them smile and have them feel like someone loves them and someone cares about them. And also to show them there's more to the world than where they are right now, and they can do whatever they want to do."
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