In some ways, the lifecycle of a nation is similar to that of a human being. The post-liberation Uganda of Yoweri Museveni, which was born in January 1986, is now 15 years old, and is behaving like any 15-year-old. Its parents, the adults who are supposed to vote in this week's elections, are as perplexed as any parent of a teenager.

It is one of those things nobody ever prepares you for. Before people marry, they are lectured by elders both in the family and at their place of worship. When they are expecting their first child, the health people tell them more than they need to know about how to care for a baby. The baby comes and there is excitement everywhere. Just like it was in 1986. They watch the baby grow and every new step it takes is a source of joy.

Likewise, we celebrated all the things we now find mundane and boring. A smooth road was something to talk about in the late 1980s. People would talk for hours about how good it felt driving on a smooth road. 

A factory that had been dormant for two decades is switched on and production begins; water starts running in the taps; private radio stations open; automatic international telephone connections start; Entebbe Airport is renovated; free primary school education comes in; new universities are opened and so on.

Thus life slowly returns to normal and there are fewer and fewer surprises. The child leaves nursery and goes to primary school. It starts eating the same food as it leaves home in the morning like everybody else and returns in the evening. You stop noticing the fellow until the primary leaving examinations. A little excitement over the choice of secondary school and then life returns to normal once again. 

After the first presidential elections of 1996, got back to the drudgery of working, paying taxes and burying friends and relatives.

Similarly, you get used to your kid not being around the house for three months. 

But with modern communication, you don't feel the difference very much. Till you realise nobody ever prepared you for being the parent of a teenager. Somehow, the sweet little fellow becomes transformed into a being whose language you don't understand and whose motives all seem to be wrong. 

The only conversations you ever have any more are bitter arguments which you always lose. When you reason well, the teenager looks at you with pity, writing you off as an ancient fossil who simply can't understand. You sigh and resign yourself to paying the bills and keeping contact with the fellow at a minimum.

Unfortunately, you cannot totally ignore him. What with all the demands for money and the noisy friends who invade your house and look at you as an intruder! Some of them look fit for prison, wearing ill-fitting clothes and rings in all the wrong places. You wonder whether they have not come to spy on the layout of the house to return and rob you at night. Though you had never thought of owning a gun in your life, you start making discreet inquiries into the licensing of firearms. 

That is how Ugandan society and its leaders must look to a detached observer at this moment in history. Fifteen years ago, they were jumping and dancing, celebrating the death of the pariah state and the rebirth of a new nation. Today, we are yelling at one another over the choice of leaders. 

The operational word here now is "choice," the ability to choose and say, we don't like this leader, we prefer the other one. We are like a couple that was barren for many years and was finally blessed with a child. But when it comes to deciding whether the growing child should become a lawyer or an engineer, they start quarrelling bitterly. 

Hopefully, like teenage, which is not permanent, this stage of national development will pass and future elections will not generate as much heat as this one.