A Montreal family and their 8 new kids

When the earthquake struck on Jan. 12, Thierry Pauyo was working at the Partners in Health Hospital in Cange, in the mountains of Haiti. He made his way to Port-au-Prince and — almost miraculously — found his eight cousins aged four to 21.

They had just become orphans.

A Canadian studying medicine at Harvard, Pauyo called his parents back in Montreal as soon as a phone line became available.

His father Eric is a 66-year-old doctor who was getting ready to wind up his practice while his mother Nicole is a 64-year-old retired nurse.

A couple of empty nesters getting ready to enjoy some travel and quiet times. Well, not quite yet.

Eric and Nicole Pauyo are now the legal guardians of eight young nieces and nephews and are scrambling to do everything they can to help the newcomers adjust to a whole new way of life in Canada.

'No other option'

When I visited them in Montreal in June it had been five months since Thierry found his eight younger cousins camped out in the rubble of Port-au-Prince.

David Gutnick is a Montreal-based documentary producer with CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition who has reported from all over the world. In February he was in Port-au-Prince and its environs to tell the story of the earthquake and its aftermath and in June he was in South Africa reporting and blogging on the World Cup.  

Now, it is standing room only in the Pauyo family kitchen on a Sunday morning.

Renata and Adele are at the stove stirring a big pot of rice and beans. Augustin and Valdo are elbow deep in dish water.

When they were found, they were still in shock and covered in dust. Their home had been flattened and four-year-old Adriano had been buried underneath.

He was dug out by his big brothers, but his left leg was shattered. Both parents were dead.

Thierry was the one who had to call his father and tell him that his brother and sister-in-law had been killed by the quake, but that he had the kids with him. He knew right then he could not leave them in Port-au-Prince:

"It is in Haitian culture and in my family's culture that you are a unit and that you are there for each other," he said later.

"So in our minds — I mean in my mind and in my parents' minds — I did not think there was any other option. Cause they did not have anyone else."

Beds to buy

The Pauyo house is an art-filled bungalow in the Town of Mount Royal, a comfortable Montreal suburb and a world away from the crowded cement house the cousins called home in downtown Port-au-Prince.

By February, all eight of them were here.

"I was winding down my hours at work," says Eric. "I worked late for 20 years so I would be available for my patients. I was looking forward to spending a lot more time with Nicole.

"But we Haitians are used to hard times and never having any real security. We knew we could help them deal with what they are going through."

The eight cousins arrived with the clothes on their backs and so traumatized they could barely speak. There were tears and nightmares.

An unquiet revolution had arrived in the lives of Eric and Nicole Pauyo.

There were beds to buy as well as sheets, towels, running shoes and bus passes. Not to mention mountains of immigration paperwork to plough through.

New set of skills

"It is like a river that is overflowing its banks," says Nicole. "When it happens you just find ways of dealing with it."

In this case, eight young black kids were also trying to adjust to living in a neighbourhood where most people are white.

Renata and Adel — who helped out in their mother's restaurant in Port-au-Prince — have taken over cooking duties, after learning how to use an electric stove.

In the spring, five of the children went to local schools and Adriano's leg began to mend.

The new family members had to learn many things from scratch, including how to set a table and how not to eat so fast — there will still be food, they were told, take your time.

This brood called on a whole new set of parenting skills. The Pauyos brought in a psychologist to help them all figure out how to make it work.

Top of the class

With their own three sons, Eric and Nicole had high expectations. The boys were expected to be accomplished athletes and Grade A students. And they delivered.

"I always told my boys that we pay our taxes in this country," Eric says, "so you have an obligation to be the best you can possibly be.

"You cannot use the colour of your skin as an excuse not to succeed. And you know what? I am right. They are all successful, and that's proof that hard work pays off."

The Pauyos are active in Montreal's Haitian community, but they never bothered to teach their sons Creole; they never took them back to Haiti to meet their relatives.

Looking forward was more important than looking back. And then the earthquake happened.

Being "top of the class" doesn't matter so much now. Eric and Nicole just want their "new kids" to manage, to feel okay. To be able to laugh

"We can't set the bar too high," says Nicole.

But "we can't set it too low either," adds Eric. "We're struggling to figure out what this means.

"How do we adapt our standards so that every single one of them gets what they need because if they don't they will be frustrated and that will not be good for anyone."

Let them be

With the breakfast dishes clean and the garbage emptied, the four teenage boys — Augustin, Valdo, Jean-Alix and Richard — head to a local park to shoot some hoops.

The talk on the way over is about how different school was back in Port-au-Prince.

In Haiti, Augustin says class time was spent "memorizing things." Jean-Alix says that in Montreal "teachers want me to ask more questions, to never take anything for granted."

In many ways, it is a lesson the boys do not need to learn.

"It's hard to be here when so many people I know do not even have enough to eat," says Jean-Alix.

As they dribble a basketball down the sidewalk there is much talk about how their old lives were buried in an instant.

They miss their friends, the sounds of Creole, the taste of food cooked on charcoal.

But they have been getting used to Montreal bus routes and they were starting to understand hockey.

The cousins have almost stopped asking themselves why, when so many people died, they are still alive.

What happened makes no sense, says Augustin. Lots of good people died, lots of bad people escaped. 

This family has a motto now, the boys say.

They repeat it in unison. "Exceptional circumstances require exceptional measures."

It is something Thierry talked about with his parents during that first call from Port-au-Prince all those months ago.

"There is really no alternative," he says. "Eight different human beings with eight different ways of thinking about life and eight ways of what they want for their own future.

"So we are just going to let them be for now — my parents, everyone — and we are just going to let them be and see how everything comes together. It is just like a cake — put in all the ingredients and see what happens."