Wildebeest Painting

In Mom’s report of her trip to Africa in 1988, she wrote of the National Museum in Nairobi:

The museum had excellent displays of…current art (including a large impressionistic painting of wildebeest migrating, which I would have bought in a moment had the price not been in four digits—U.S. currency).

Because Mom could not take the painting with her, she took a photograph of it.

Back home in Belize, when Mom showed Alex and María the photos from her trip, she told them how taken she had been with the painting. Unbeknownst to her, Alex then took her photo to local artist Stella Jefferies, who painted a copy. When Mom opened her present from Alex on Christmas morning, she was astonished, delighted, and overwhelmed to discover the painting by Jefferies.

Mom’s beloved wildebeest painting graced her living-room wall for the remainder of her life.