Parents Take Family On Trip Around The World Before Their Children Lose Their Sight

Jan 13, 2023 by apost team

If you had the opportunity to travel, where would you go? Paris to see the Eiffel Tower? Rome to walk into the colosseum? Giza to gaze at the great pyramids? Sydney to see the great barrier reef? There are thousands of cities, each with their own unique treasures; all one needs is a plane ticket.

One Canadian family took the trend of wanderlust to the extreme when they planned a multi-country, multi-month journey with their four children. Only unlike the standard influencer gaggle backpacking around the world, Edith Lemay and Sebastien Pelletier are taking their children to see the sites, knowing they won't be able to later.

A few years prior, their daughter Mia was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic condition that causes the complete or partial loss of vision over time. She had been experiencing problems with her vision since as young as three, and after the problem worsened was finally diagnosed. 

To make matters worse, their sons, Laurent and Colin, also began experiencing problems with their vision and were shortly thereafter diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa as well. The only sibling not to be diagnosed was their son Leo, who was given a clean bill of health. 

Retinitis pigmentosa is "estimated to affect one in 4,000 people." There is no cure for the condition. With this outcome, the family decided to give their children the opportunity to quite literally see the world before losing more of their vision. 

The family planned to embark in July 2020 on their travels however were stalled by the pandemic. In March 2022, they finally left their home in Montreal for Namibia. From there, without much planning, they continued moving, homeschooling their children from every corner of the globe and posting their travels to social media.

While the parents were initially, of course, upset at their children's diagnosis, they've accepted their future. "There's nothing you can really do," Lemay explained. "We don't know how fast it's going to go, but we expect them to be completely blind by mid-life."

Given the pace of the condition, both parents felt the best thing to do while their children still had their vision was to see the world. "I thought, 'I'm not going to show her an elephant in a book, I'm going to take her to see a real elephant," she told CNN reporters. "And I'm going to fill her visual memory with the best, most beautiful images I can."

"With the diagnosis, we have an urgency," said Pelletier. "There's great things to do at home, but there's nothing better than traveling … Not only the scenery, but also the different cultures and people." The family planned to leave snowy Canada and expose their children to the sites and wonders of other countries. 

However, the family didn't exactly plan how they were going to go about seeing everything. "We actually left without an itinerary," admitted Lemay. "We had ideas of where we wanted to go..."

From Namibia, the family traveled to Zambia and then Tanzania before flying on to Turkey. They then made their way to Mongolia before moving on to Indonesia. "We're really trying to make them see things that they wouldn't have seen at home and have the most incredible experiences," explained Pelletier. We wish them many happy travels and safe returns.

apost.com

Where would you travel if you could go anywhere in the world? Let us know — and be sure to pass this article on to friends, family, as well as any fellow travelers!