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–Brazil relations Jesuit priest Gonçalo João succinctly stated the importance of the economic relationship between Brazil and Angola as "Without Angola, there is no Brazil". Angola was a major source of slaves to Brazil, which was, out of the several European colonies in the Americas, the largest single importer of slaves during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Two-thirds of those slaves in Brazil originated from the Angola-Congo region. Rio de Janeiro depended on the consistent influx of slaves from Angola to work on sugar cane plantations and for re-exportation to Buenos Aires in exchange for silver. Exports from Brazil to Angola in exchange