Clodagh Finn: An African wedding, three funerals, and a suitcase of lost letters

Olive Archer's painting of her home in the DRC. 

When Irish missionary Olive Archer finally arrived at her destination after a four-week canoe journey down the River Luapula in central Africa, her fiancé jumped from his bed and ran to meet her in his pyjamas.

That poignant moment — and the danger and excitement of the many moments preceding it — are captured in vivid prose by Olive in a diary and her letters home. Those documents, preserved by family members, open a fascinating peephole into the lives of two Irish people who set out in the 1920s on a spiritual and medical mission.