As a young woman she joined the Guinea-Bissau Liberation Movement (Movimento para Independência Nacional da Guiné Portuguesa) (later the PAIGC) in 1959/60.
She first worked in the Secretariat of the PAIGC in Conakry, being sent in 1965 to Kiev in the former USSR to receive training as a nurse.
From 1967, she was deputy director of the Escola Piloto in Conakry, a training centre for Guinea-Bissauan child soldiers and war refugees.
During the years of revolution she worked as a nurse in PAIGC-occupied areas in Guinea and then at the PAIGC hospital at Ziguinchor in Senegal.
She was the Mayor of her home town of Bolama and chairman of the Guinea-Bissau Women's Union (União Democrática the Mulheres da Guiné-Bissau).