VISION QUEST

This family is travelling the world-before the kids lose their vision to a rare genetic condition

- Lisa Fitterman

HIS mouth open in both wonder and horror, Laurent Pelletier stares at the carnivorous armoured bush cricket that has landed in front of him on the picnic table. The boy is camping with his family near Fish River Canyon in Namibia, in southwest Africa. The insect, yellow and light green, has a collar of spikes and six spindly legs planted in a boxer’s stance. It’s as big as the five-year-old’s hand.

“Can we eat it?” he asks his mom, Edith Lemay.

“I don’t think so,” she says, laughing. “Can I take it as a travel companion?”

“No, but you’ll meet many more.”

And Laurent did, over and over again during the first few months of a yearlong trip through Africa, Asia and the Middle East with his parents and three older siblings, Mia, 12, Léo, 10, and Colin, 7. Bush crickets, ground crickets, baby crickets, crickets whose chirping lulled them to sleep at night; they became talismans, part of a panoply of encounters during which the kids experienced the world in technicolour and surround sound. Imprinting memories by horseback riding across the bright green steppes of Mongolia, kayaking on the azure sea off Cambodia, camping under the soaring brick-red peaks of Namibia and hot-air ballooning over the brown, lunar-like landscape in Turkey.

Far from their home in Boucherville, Quebec, the children’s experiences, steeped in colour, shape, touch and smell, are especially important to them. Because unless science makes a breakthrough soon, three of the four siblings—Mia, Colin and Laurent—will become blind, likely in adulthood. They have been diagnosed with a disease that has no effective treatment as it gradually robs them of their sight.