The world’s biggest sports extravaganza is due in just three months and I don’t have much hope of Uganda winning many gold medals.

At the last Olympics in London, Stephen Kiprotich redeemed us after a 40-year gold drought and won the closing event of the Games, the Marathon – much to the amazement of our Kenyan brothers and sisters who thought these long races of endurance belonged to them by right.

As their president told us when he came to address the Ugandan parliament last year, when Kenyans heard that Kiprotich had won the Olympic Marathon, they started celebrating, until they were told he was Ugandan.

Well, the Kiprotich excitement died out two years ago. Because we don’t stand a chance in football, we resorted to searching for heroes in the “basic instinct” area of nudity.

There was a not-so-great musician whose jilted West African boyfriend leaked her nude photos on the Internet. We turned her into an instant heroine. At the time she was debt-ridden and Kampala businessmen started competing to pay off her debts.

When we tired of that one, we got another “socialite” whose only claim to fame was playing around with men. She leaked her nude photos on social media and for a while Kampala celebrated her too.

Then our upcountry sisters from the north gave us a couple of old women who were annoyed about a land border dispute between two districts. They waited when two Cabinet ministers went to address a rally and undressed before them. We never got the old women’s names so we tired of them quickly.

Then a local TV host decided to leak her nude videos. This one did a little bit better than the jobless socialite and the oldies, but within a few weeks was also forgotten. And then we got another break, as sensational as a prison break.

Another socialite was released from prison where she had been serving a four-year sentence for stealing money from her British ex-boyfriend. She had gone to prison with a black skin and came out with a very light yellowish skin. She declared that she was going to become a music star and we celebrated her music hits even before she released one.

And then the big one came from the highest institution of learning a week or two ago. A forty-something PhD researcher stripped down to her knickers in the full glare of media cameras. She was embroiled in a quarrel with her institute director but we don’t care about boring disputes between two academics. What the nation wanted and got was the academic’s nakedness.

Olympics are not European soccer so most Ugandans are not even aware that they are around the corner. We need a Ugandan hero to emerge in the Brazil Olympics and help us forget naked women.

Please God, help Kiprotich repeat his London feat. Please allow one or two other Ugandan athletes to shine in Brazil. Amen.

Joachim Buwembo is a social and political commentator based in Kampala. E-mail: [email protected]