Omubbi
by Jason Arment
The more pedestrian posts on larger bases in Iraq were stood by private contractors—mercenaries. The posts requiring fluent English were stood by young men from India, and the posts requiring fighting prowess were manned by Ugandans. Unlike mercenaries from the West, who seemed to take themselves too seriously, with dour dispositions, the Ugandans were outwardly friendly. They were quick to joke, laughing easily and often. During the day, those not on post could be found sleeping in hammocks, or on patio furniture around their barracks, unphased by the desert heat.
Marines took to the Ugandans, asking them about their experiences with war and about their homeland. The Ugandans had stories of civil war back home, and bullet wounds and scars as visual aids. As a group, they seemed to be more collectively minded than Westerners, and didn’t hesitate to write messages on the walls with spray paint to form a kind of collective thought. One message appeared again and again around the base, especially near their barracks.
“BEWARE OF OMUBBI!”
It struck us as odd that men so easygoing in nature but fierce in battle would fear any man. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me, and I asked.
“This Omubbi, who is he? And why are you so afraid of him?” I asked a Ugandan standing post at the chow hall. “To rate written warnings all over the base, he must be one bad motherfucker.”
“No, no. Omubbi is not a man,” the guard answered with a thick accent.
I nodded gravely.
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Is Omubbi some sort of evil spirit?”
The Ugandan’s dark face split by the white teeth of his smile, and he shook his head.
“Omubbi is a type of person who takes what is not theirs,” his brow furrowed as he searched for the right word. “Thief! Omubbi is a thief!”
As I sat and ate in the chow hall, I thought about Omubbi. How, when Echo Company had first arrived in country and moved to live briefly at Camp Habbaniyah, myself and other Marines had left our barracks at night to explore the base. Any gear that wasn’t bolted down, we pilfered. In the Marine Corps there was a saying: “Gear adrift is a gift.” There was also the saying, “Marines are heart breakers and life takers.” Although the Ugandan mercenaries had a great deal in common with Marines, they seemed to carry an innocence with them, something that made Marines like them but also realize they were fundamentally different.
The Ugandan mercenaries were thrust into war against their own people at an early age, then carried on with soldiering as a profession. Marines chose to join the Corp, the hardest and most elite branch of the military that wasn’t special forces, voluntarily separating from their people to live by the sword.
As I left the chow hall and stepped back out into the desert of the Al Anbar province, a brewing sandstorm colored the air a brown tinge. As I passed the chow hall entrance, I waved to the Ugandan guard. I wondered if the Ugandans realized that Omubbi wasn’t one or two people, but every single Marine who walked among them. We were there to take, be it take ground back from extremists or the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people or the Ugandan’s gear or the lives of our enemies.
The walk back to Echo’s barracks I tried to keep my breathing shallow with a scarf around my face to avoid taking in too much of the desert’s sands; sandstorms could cause respiratory and intestinal infections. I wondered how the Ugandans managed to keep a hold of their innocence through it all, how they still managed to greet every man as a brother. I realized a big part of why I was drawn to them was how they reminded me of something good I’d left behind years ago.
After this, I stayed away from the Ugandans.
“War doesn’t only tear people apart, it also brings people together.” —Jason Arment
Jason Arment served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Machine Gunner in the USMC. He’s earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, ESPN, the 2017 Best American Essays, and The New York Times, among other publications. His memoir about the war in Iraq, Musalaheen, stands in stark contrast to other narratives about Iraq in both content and quality. Much of his writing can be found at jasonarment.com.