A traffic light at the Wandegeya Junction was knocked out of position. Several weeks later, it has not been set right. I don't know how much it would cost to realign the pole but I suspect that a couple of well-built men would do the job in a couple of minutes for around Shs100,000.

Meanwhile, the road that snakes through Ntinda trading centre has some of the worst traffic hold-ups in the city. The traffic jam is caused partly by the rapid growth of the surrounding areas, leading to a sharp rise in the number of cars headed to Kira, Namugongo, Naalya and other 'new middle-class' settlements.

It is also caused by the terrible state of the road, with potholes that swallow cars on one end and spit them out on the other with creaking shock absorbers and wounded suspensions. Why does Ntinda, a vibrant economic hub and a gateway to upcoming middle-class residential areas, have a stretch of road with potholes deep enough to hold fish? Don't the businesses in these areas or area residents pay taxes?

Mark you, it is not just Ntinda. Drive through many of the city suburbs, from Bugolobi to Bakuli, and you will find roads that would easily pass as wildlife tracks. No wonder we can never get rid of cows in the city!

So what do our pathetic roads tell us about ourselves? First, that we are poor (although we must know this by now) and do not have enough money to fix all the roads overnight but that is the least of our problems.

We are also lazy and unwilling to plan for future events. Potholes do not happen overnight; you do not whizz through a road on your way home and return the next morning to find a giant pothole (although roads done by certain contractors have been known to just give way!). Potholes start slowly with a small depression in the road. The smart thing to do is to patch it up to stop it spreading but our beloved mayors and town clerks watch idly as the pothole evolves into a crater and then into a map of the world.

What could have been saved by a stitch in time at that point requires surgery - for which there is never any money. But how come the road to Kisaasi - where Mayor Nasser Ssebagala has a home, is a million times worse than the road to Kira in Wakiso District? My theory: The 'middle-class' residents of Kisaasi are more likely to curse the mayor in their air-conditioned 4WD project cars as they bump along but will not step out to barricade the road in protest. The fishermen and boda boda riders in Wakiso, however, will make sure that officials who fail to fix the roads bite the dust, as their district chairperson, Ian Kyeyune, found out last year.

One for the road, if you can forgive the pun; Lugogo Bypass or Rotary Avenue as it is known, once one of a few pothole-free roads in the city, now spots several, including one that has developed in a blind corner over the last three months. Rather than fix the potholes and the street lighting, officials at Kampala City Council decided to create new potholes and hold up traffic by spending money on building a round-about and narrowing a section of the road! Like the man who goes into hospital for circumcision and, forgetting the word, asks for castration, sometimes we just need to be saved from ourselves!