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I'm Shereen Marisol Maraji. I'm Jean Demby and this is CodeSwitch from NPR.

Jean, 20 years ago when I was much younger, I was living in Oakland, California and I had started training Kapueda,

which became an obsession in my life. Kapueda, that's the Afro-Bizanian martial art.

It is and it's where I met someone who would eventually become a really good friend of mine. Her name is Jessica Delima. She's Brazilian.

We spent a ton of time together playing Kapueda. We were together all the time because she was also very obsessed with Kapueda.

We got really good at it. We were performing and we were teaching and yeah, we were just putting a lot of our energy into this.

I saw you on the AG doing all these wild roundhouse kids on the AG stories. Do you still practice? Do you still play Kapueda?

So that was me thinking, oh, I'm going to get back to this now that I'm in quarantine. This is how I'm going to keep in shape.

I'm going to start playing Kapueda again after 10 years and yeah, two kicks and I had pulled something in my leg.

The answer to your question is no, I do not still practice. I stopped because I really couldn't find a balance between being a journalist and being a Kapuedaista.

But Jessica, my friend Jessica, she dedicated her life to Kapueda. She met her husband, Sean Moran, through Kapueda.

And now Jessica Delima is Jessica Delima Moran. They're better known in the Kapueda world as Bavav and Chegalu.

Okay, so I guess you could say they kick game to each other. Kick, kick game, kicked.

Exactly. They literally kicked game at each other at each other's heads.

So Pavao and Chigaro, what what are we all get nicknamed in Kapueda and our nicknames often reflect our personalities,

how we play in the halta, which is the circle that we play in. Pavao means peacock and Portuguese.

And that nickname, you don't know her, but that nickname is perfect for her. She stands out in a lot of ways. She's extra.

She stands out as a leader too when she talks, people listen. She has a very, very forceful personality. You do not mess with Pavao.

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