“All people who come here are peaceful to begin with, Wisam Ibrahim says, “then they begin to play, and a transformation occurs.
Quite. Running, aiming and firing at moving targets can be a conduit for releasing pent up aggression. And there’s no place like Cairo to fill up that rage-o-meter. Ibrahim, along with his partners Yousry Esmat and Amir El Naggar, have opened a paintball field in the Sodfa Pasha Country Club near Saqqara which might serve as an outlet for your inner demons, or ID if you want to get technical.
The appeal of firing paint pellets at a bunch of people (usually your friends) has a simple appeal according to Ibrahim. “All the kids have a huge amount of repression that they want to release. That pressure and energy is expended in paintball, he tells The Daily Star Egypt.
Expressing latent frustration through acts of aggression? We’ve heard that one before, but at least no one gets hurt (too badly). It’s channeled in a relatively safe way.
Relatively safe because when one does get shot, it does sting or hurt depending on where it landed and how close your assailant was. Additionally, if you are unfortunate enough to get struck on bare skin, a nasty little welt forms. A lesser one will form if the pellet strikes through, say, a pair of trousers.
But boy is it fun. To ensure that it remains fun however, safety is a must. The club provides you with the necessary protection gear, a vest and more pertinently, a mask. The importance of the mask cannot be stressed enough, it must be kept on at all times when in the field of play.
Besides, the mask makes one look ominous in a cool sort of way, like a young Darth Vader had he become a marine rather than the Dark Lord of the Sith.
“Safety is very important, Ibrahim says, “you must observe the safety regulations at all times, because you can get seriously hurt if you don’t. Additionally, there is the 4-meter rule i.e. you cannot shoot at anyone at a closer distance than that.
There is a minder on the field to ensure that all the rules are abided by.
The cost begins at LE 100 per person for half an hour and you are given a hundred bullets to start with. Every additional half hour costs another LE 30 and when you run out of bullets, you can buy another hundred bullets for LE 50.
The idea to bring paintball to Cairo (there is one in Alexandria) came about when the three partners (who are also managing the country club as a whole) were lounging about at Ibrahim’s home.
“I had just got a game called Battlefield 2, Ibrahim continues, “so I wanted to create a network between our home computers to play the game. I said out loud that I wish I could play this game for real. Yousry said we could buy paintball guns and the idea grew from there.
It opened to the public at the end of February and Ibrahim says that around 80% of the people who come are Egyptian. And it’s not just for the boys. According to Ibrahim females also come to slug it out with the best of them.
As is customary with more westernized themes being introduced to the country, the people behind paintball face the seemingly obligatory tensions with Customs.
Ibrahim says, “because they don’t know what it is, when they see the guns or bullets, they send it to the explosives unit who send it to General Security who send it to the forensic lab for tests. They didn’t just do this the first time round, they do this every time. They are not ready to understand, there’s a lot of bureaucracy impending the import of the bullets and guns.
The guns obviously don’t look like real ones, and if live ammunition was to be put in them and fired, the guns would melt instantaneously and possibly explode.
In any case, if you’re willing to risk a few bruises and nasty looking bumps, and have a surfeit of, to put it delicately, excess stress, then paintball might be the thing for you. Or maybe you just want to shoot people. In that case too, paintball is also the way to go.
So run, duck, aim and fire away till you hear that satisfying splat, but be nice and don’t go for the family jewels.
