Domestic abour has been considered at the core of the discussion over exploitation of women’s work in western countries. Discussion over this aspect can be seen from different perspectives in Africa. Memories of slavery can provide valuable insights into domestic labour from an emic perspective. Although not explicitly categorized as domestic labour, the work of children and girls frequently appears in interviews about slavery memories. These narratives describe children and girls as workers whose labour could be exchanged for a debt, as children who disobeyed their parents and were deemed unworthy of remaining at home, or as children given to relatives without offspring to assist them. Girls and children were often involved in various exchanges necessary to supply domestic and care work. Additionally, at the end of the nineteenth century, kidnapping was a possible fate for girls, who would be forced to become wives in a group outside their own and care for the offspring. This paper examines memories of slavery collected in Northern Mozambique to reflect on the critical role of the life cycle in understanding domestic work in Africa from the early twentieth century onwards.