At the end of a long career behind the counters of a bank and in the finance department of an oil company, the time had come for us to retire and bravely embark on the last phase of our lives. From then on, it was no longer a question of waking up very early and braving inclement weather to get to work on time. It didn't take us long to start up a small poultry farm and learn how to operate a homemade incubator with dexterity. And, in addition to the activities involved in maintaining the cages and feeding the quails, we made sure to set aside time to read at home from our small library and from books borrowed from friends. Of course, it's embarrassing to bump into your children and grandchildren in the aisles of a library open to the public, preparing their final papers. The careful examination of a map at our disposalinspired us to write a book on the Sankuru-Lomami area in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and on certain socio-cultural realities of the Kusu-tetela people.