Recent quantitative studies of the Atlantic slave trade tend to marginalise the voices of the enslaved and transported Africans who were its victims, but some sense of their experience is provided by surviving narratives by African-born ex-slaves. This essay draws attention to a neglected example of such narratives, the biography (published in the USA, 1854) of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, from Djougou (in modern Bénin), who was enslaved and exported to Brazil in 1845. It explores some of the problems of interpretation raised by this text, especially the relationship between Baquaqua's Muslim upbringing and his conversion to Christianity in the Diaspora.