Children will go blind, Canadian couple takes them around the world to create “visual memories”

A long journey around the world to absorb as much beauty as possible. Sweet family memories to accumulate before the dark takes over. When to Canadian spouses Edith Lemay And Sebastien Pelletier was advised to fill their second daughter Mia, now 11, with “visual memories”, they felt there was only one valid way to do this: leave all together for an unforgettable adventure. “I thought: ‘I won’t show you an elephant in a book – he told the woman to the Cnn -, I’ll take her to see a real elephant. And she will fill her visual memory of her with the best and most beautiful images I can ”». The little girl, who started suffering from eye problems as early as the age of 3, had just been diagnosed with one retinitis pigmentosa, rare genetic condition which determines the progressive loss of vision up to, in the most serious cases, total blindness. And the same fate then befell two of the couple’s other three children in 2019: Colin (7 years old) and Laurent (5 years old), who had started showing the same symptoms. The only one to “save” his second son Leo (9 years old), spared from the disease for a mere matter of luck.

“There is nothing that can really be done», Explained the mother again, illustrating how unfortunately there is still neither a cure nor an effective treatment to deal with the disease. “We do not know how fast she will progress – she added -, but we expect Mia, Colin and Laurent to go completely blind by middle age“. Hence the decision of Edith and Sebastien to fund their savings and, without wasting time, to leave for a year with the four children. This, however, not before having made them draw up a wish list: Mia, for example, expressed that of ride horse, while little Laurent wanted so much to drink juice on the back of a camel. Originally scheduled for 2020, the journey was thus able to start from Montreal airport last March, once the Covid emergency eased. First stop: the Namibia. Then it was the turn of Zambia, Tanzania And Turkey. Currently the six are instead in Mongoliaafter which it will be the turn ofIndonesia.

“We are focusing on landscapes – he always explained to the Cnn dad Sebastien -, but also on fauna and flora. We have seen amazing animals in Africa, but also in Turkey and elsewhere. We are trying to show our children things they would never see
at home and to make them live incredible experiences ». To demonstrate this publicly, the shots shared by the family on the accounts Instagram And Facebook
“Le monde plein leurs yeux“ (“The world fills their eyes”). And they are not lacking either valuable life lessons: “No matter how hard their existence will be – said Edith – I wanted to show them that they are lucky even just to have water in the house and to be able to go to school every day with nice colored books”. The last countries to visit before returning to Montreal have yet to be defined. What is certain is that every moment will be savored with maximum intensity. With the hope, of course, that the future may hold very welcome surprises: “Let’s hope science finds a solution – said Sebastien -. Let’s cross our fingers for this ».