During the colonial Portuguese occupation of Goa, enslaved Africans were brought to Goa to work in the Portuguese forts and factories and perform various other manual tasks. The Portuguese with their headquarters at Goa also recruited a significant number of African soldiers in their cavalry and deployed them in territories they controlled along the western Indian Ocean. While the enslaved African men served their Portuguese masters as guards, domestic helps, and dockyard workers, enslaved African women served as domestic slaves in the Portuguese households and in other establishments managed by the Portuguese missionaries and nuns. Often fragmented information about Africans in Goa can be found in Portuguese sources and in travelogues written by Dutch, French, and English visitors to Goa. As in the case of most historical documents, information about Africans is typically mentioned in the context of other matters or issues, and so it is very difficult to establish anything about their identity or cultural life. Unlike other places, memories of African presence in Goa are mostly effaced from the collective social memory. Other than a few modest shrines dedicated to the wandering African Khapri or Kappiri that can be found mostly in the hinterlands there are hardly any material memories of African presence in the region.