I am trying to figure out why Ugandans hate the jerrican so much. Mostly made of plastic and coming often in yellow, the jerrican usually has a capacity of 20 litres and is locally called kidomola.

It has been one of Uganda’s biggest saviours over the past four decades since our capacity to pipe water on a continuous basis to buildings started failing. But instead, we despise the poor thing so much you wouldn’t imagine it does so much work for us everyday.

In the past, people used to abuse others by equating them to despised animals like the goat (embuzi), which connotes stupidity, and the hyena, which is despised for its thoughtless greed. After 1986 some of our new leaders added a bird — the duck (embaata) and a fish, the Nile Perch (empuuta) to the “stupid list.”

But the youth felt that to call a silly person a duck is not fair to the duck, and started abusing people using plant names. First was papaya (eppaapali), which was soon overtaken by the potato (lumonde) to describe fools.

As all these terrible abuses were being developed, the political class that had earlier given us the duck were quietly working on the jerrican in order to make it the ultimate insult.

You see, ours has been a country of elections for nearly three decades now. This means people have been politicking for the past 28 years. Indeed, right now, there is more preoccupation with the 2016 elections in Uganda than you can perceive say, in Tanzania, whose 2015 elections are nearer and unlike Uganda’s, must necessarily produce a new president.

Somewhere during the numerous elections Uganda has had over the years, politicians and their campaign agents stared saying that their rivals were so worthless that given a choice between them and a jerrican, the people would vote for the kidomola.

Jerricans actually won several elections in different villages, where a favourite candidate did not attend the polling for one reason or another and a kidomola was placed where he should have stood for the voters to queue behind it.

Other inanimate objects have competed with and lost to the jerrican when it comes to representing mental deficiency. The guitar (endongo) reigned for a while. The kerosene wick lamp (kataala) also tried to vie for the honour. But none has effectively displaced the jerrican.

It must be its tendency to remind us of our incompetence at infrastructure development that makes us subconsciously angry at the jerrican. What with an average family owning a minimum of 10 jerricans just to feel safe! And when people with families are buying a car, one of the important considerations is how many jerricans it can carry, giving station wagons an edge over saloons.

So next time you visit Kampala and cannot figure out which of our usually unmarked lanes to take as you drive and a woman driver next to you expressionlessly says under her breath, “Laba ekidomola,” don’t smile imagining it is a greeting. She is just attesting to your presumed daftness.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: [email protected]