Carmen Souza few times, once on a family trip when she was ten and again as an adult in 2010, she grew up speaking Creole and eating Cape Verdean cuisine. While still a child, she began singing gospel music in the church choir. Her parents maintained close ties with the diaspora, and Souza's childhood was filled with the music and culture of Cape Verde, along with that of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and São Tomé. Souza's father, Antonio, a merchant sailor, insisted she should learn English and German. After spending just one year at college, she left to
Angola series of renewed military expeditions into the hinterland. By the mid-nineteenth century Portugal had established its dominion as far east as the Congo River and as far south as Mossâmedes. Until the late 1880s, Lisbon entertained proposals to link Angola with its colony in Mozambique but was blocked by British and Belgian opposition. In this period, the Portuguese came up against different forms of armed resistance from various peoples in Angola. The Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 set the colony's borders, delineating the boundaries of Portuguese claims in Angola, although many details were unresolved until the 1920s. Trade between Portugal and