In 1625 the Portuguese merchant André Donelha was on business at the port of Gambia and serendipitously met with an enslaved acquaintance, Gaspar Vaz, a Mandinga youth. Donelha himself was born in the Cape Verde Islands of Portuguese parentage. He had become familiar with Vaz because the young man was bound under the employ of Donelha's White neighbor. Donelha later detailed an account of their meeting:

The black was a good tailor and button-maker. As soon as he knew that I was in the port he came to see me and paid a call on me with great enthusiasm. He embraced me, saying that he could not believe it was me he saw, and that God had brought me there so that he could do me some service. For this I gave him thanks, saying that I was very pleased to see him too, so that I could give him news of his master and mistress and acquaintances, but that I was distressed to see him dressed in a Mandinga smock, with amulets of his fetishes (gods) around his neck to which he replied: “Sir, I wear this dress because I am nephew of Sandeguil, lord of this town, whom the tangomaos, call duke, since he is the person who commands after the king. On the death of Sandeguil, my uncle, I will be inheritor of all his goods, and for this reason I dress in the clothes that your Honour sees, but I do not believe the Law of Mohammed, rather I abhor it. I believe in the Law of Christ Jesus, and so that your Honour may know that what I say is true” – he took off his smock, beneath which he wore a doublet and shirt in our [European] fashion, and from around his neck drew out a rosary of Our Lady – “every day I commend myself to God and the Virgin Our Lady by means of this rosary. And if I do not die, but come to inherit the estate of my uncle, I will see to it that some slaves are sent to Santiago, and when I have found a ship to take me I will go to live in that island and die among Christians.”