Ever since the movie "Moana" first hit theaters, 8-year-old Mathias Pascal from Cuxac-d'Aude, France, had dreamed of visiting the land of "Vaiana," the name given to the dark-haired heroine of Disney's 2016 blockbuster in the French release.
"He watched the movie from the time he was very little, and I would tell him, of course, one day we will go," said Mathias' mother, Aline Pascal, during a recent phone call from Raiatea in the South Pacific. It is one of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, where the family is wrapping up a month-long adventure they never expected to take so soon.
Almost a year ago, Pascal and her husband, Eric, received the kind of news no parent ever expects to hear.
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After they noticed that Mathias, a generally athletic and active 7-year-old at the time who loved swimming in the pool and in the Mediterranean Sea near their home, was having trouble getting around, the couple, relatively unworried at first, took him to the doctor.
A few days later, on December 30, 2020, they received a devastating diagnosis. Mathias had an aggressive form of brain cancer called a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma. Because of its proximity to critical structures, they were told the tumor was inoperable and that their fair-haired boy with the sparkling eyes likely had only about a year left to live.
"The first thing we did was quit our jobs the very next day so we could spend every minute surrounding him with love and support and doing everything we could to make him happy," said Aline, who left her job as a nurse. Eric left his job as a welder.
"Then we decided we would find a way to take Mathias to the places from Vaiana," she said.
A Community Comes Together to Help
French Polynesia, which sprawls across 1.6 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean between Australia and South America, is known for its otherworldly beauty, spread across 118 islands and atolls.
The landscapes of places like Tahiti (the island where most international visitors arrive), Moorea, the Marquesas Islands, and atolls such as Rangiroa and Fakarava include everything from lush, dizzying mountains and thundering waterfalls to ring-shaped coral atolls that look like life rings tossed into the deep blue ocean. The islands are famous for having some of the best diving spots on the planet.
Renowned for drawing newlyweds who dream of staying in an overwater bungalow somewhere like Bora Bora, this destination is extraordinary, and one that tends to come with an extraordinarily high price tag.
When the Pascal family began radiation and chemotherapy in France for their son in early 2021, Aline said she and Eric were planning to grab a backpack and a tent to explore French Polynesia on a tight budget in order to make their son's big dream come true.
But when a local charity association in the town of Narbonne, La Bande de Copains, heard about the young boy's plight, a plan began to take shape.
The group first met Mathias in July 2021 after a mutual friend connected them, said the organization's president, Benoit Perez.
"Narbonne is a small town of 50,000 people where everyone knows one another," Perez wrote in an email. "After we heard the news about an 8-year-old boy who was sick, it was only natural for our association to come to the family's aid."
An outpouring of love followed from more than 300 members of the organization and the wider community across the French departments of Aude, Aveyron, and beyond, leading to a series of charity events throughout the summer and fall.
The organization worked to raise money for the family's trip by selling bracelets reading "Vagues d'amour" (waves of love), putting on a carnival for children, selling "lottery" tickets donated by local businesses, and holding a Polynesian evening for 250 people, tickets for which sold out in 48 hours, Perez said, along with a traditional performance of the haka dance.
In the end, he said, 33,000 euros (about $37,000) was raised. That was enough to send Mathias, his parents, his older brother Maxime, and a cousin from the south of France to the South Pacific for a month, to immerse the boy in the land of his heroine.
Mathias' aunt and uncle paid their own way to French Polynesia from France.
Perez said he was inspired not only by the unbreakable spirit of Mathias and his family, but also by the outpouring of love from the wider community during what he calls "a very difficult time in France."
Between the rise of extremism in the country and COVID-19 pitting the vaccinated and unvaccinated against one another, Perez said France's motto of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" seemed to have "lost its meaning" lately.
Mathias and his dream served as a unifying force, inspiring solidarity at a time when the community needed it most.
"It's a hard moment right now," Perez said, but the cause brought light to dark times and "allowed us to put things in perspective and prove that, by being together, we can achieve wonderful things."
The Trip of a Lifetime Begins
Those wonderful things began for Mathias and his family on November 26, when they set out on a journey of more than 24 hours that ultimately brought them aboard an Air Tahiti Nui flight from Paris to Papeete, on the main island of Tahiti.
When they finally departed for French Polynesia, the family left their tents and backpacks behind.
A French public television channel that broadcasts in French Polynesia told the story of Mathias' dream, Aline said. Afterward, hundreds of offers came in from all over the islands, ranging from stays in guesthouses to day trips on diving boats to snorkel with reef sharks.
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"We had more offers and invitations than we could ever take up in a month," she said.
The family decided to visit six islands and atolls, Tahiti, Moorea, Rangiroa, Huahine, and Raiatea, and plans to spend Christmas swimming in the famous Bora Bora lagoon in Santa hats. Then they will return to Narbonne, where their journey began, on December 30, 2021, exactly one year after their lives changed forever.
They share their adventures in a Facebook group called Mathias En Polynésie for friends and supporters.
The Scents, Sights, and Sounds of the Islands Bring Comfort
Over the past few weeks, young Mathias has been welcomed like royalty everywhere he has gone, his mother said. And despite the wonderful things they have seen both above and below the surface of the water, what left the greatest impression on the family was the deep wave of hospitality from the French Polynesians.
A tattooed man dressed as Maui from "Moana" was among the local welcome committee when they first landed in Papeete. There, Mathias got to see another of his dreams come true, being tattooed just like Maui himself.
Before Mathias left France, a tattoo artist made an exception to tattoo the young boy's arm with an image of a kneeling Tahitian woman dressed in a floral pareo and a crown.
When the family landed on the Rangiroa atoll on December 6, drums thundered through the air. Children dressed in grass skirts and shell necklaces danced in front of Mathias, as if welcoming a president.
Crowns and flower necklaces strung with tiare (Tahitian gardenias) were placed on the family as they pushed their boy in his wheelchair from the runway into the open-air airport with its straw roof.
Although the illness has affected her son's eyesight, and paralysis on his right side has confined him to a wheelchair, Aline said she takes photos on her phone to show Mathias close-up views of the beauty of the landscapes. And he can clearly feel all the sensations and emotions that surround them, she said.
Mathias reacts noticeably to the scent of plumeria and other tropical flowers, the sound of someone strumming a ukulele, and the magical feeling of bathing for hours in the arms of his parents, brother, aunt, and uncle in an ocean far warmer than the one back home.
"At first he was a little afraid to go into the ocean here, since he can't see as well as he used to," Aline said. "But he regained his confidence, and now he's the one asking to go into the water. He'll even doze off in the ocean."
After so many months of hospital visits and treatment, she said, the trip gave them all a much-needed chance to recharge and disconnect from it all, and Mathias seems to be getting the most out of it.
"He's more active now, sleeps less, and is joking around again, something he had stopped doing before," she said.
And although Aline said the people they meet are sometimes surprised to see the family laughing and joking together, knowing that Mathias likely has only a few months left to live, they would not have it any other way.
"When he's no longer here, I'll have plenty of time to cry," she said. "We have to keep smiling, keep the good energy, keep hope for today and tomorrow, for Mathias' sake," Aline said.
"It's about the quality of the days that remain, not how many days you have left."
Top image: Mathias Pascal and his father, Eric (in front), with his uncle and aunt (standing). Photo courtesy of Aline Pascal
