Where did you go, camaraderie,
you unwritten law of the people,
you silent constitution of the village,
older than courts,
stronger than decrees,
binding men not by fear, but by belonging?
For there was a time,
not recorded in statutes,
yet engraved in the conduct of men,
when society needed no enforcement,
for conscience was its policeman,
and kinship its highest court.
In those days,
a man closed his door only against the leopard,
only against the hyena’s cunning eye,
never against a fellow man.
For it was known, and never questioned,
that a neighbor is your first shield.
Everyone was the security of the other.
The child belonged to the village,
the stranger to the community,
and the hungry to every hearth.
At dusk, fires summoned more than warmth,
they summoned truth.
Men gathered, not merely to eat,
but to account for the day before witnesses of trust.
The calabash moved like a covenant,
sealing brotherhood with every passing hand.
And when disputes arose, as they always do among men,
they did not ferment into hatred.
They were summoned before the fire,
tried in the court of elders,
where wisdom spoke slowly,
and justice wore the face of reconciliation.
For it was said,
when brothers fight, a stranger inherits their land.
And so anger was disciplined,
not by punishment,
but by the fear of breaking the circle.
Where did you go, camaraderie,
now that laws multiply,
but justice diminishes?
Now that courts are full,
but hearts are empty?
We have written constitutions,
yet erased compassion.
We have built prisons,
yet destroyed understanding.
The modern man locks his door not for beasts,
but for his own kind.
He fears his neighbor more than the night,
and in that fear,
he has unknowingly buried you.
The fires still exist,
but they no longer gather men.
The meat still roasts,
but without fellowship, it is tasteless.
The brew still ferments,
but no truth travels with it.
We speak now in fragments,
through screens and suspicion,
forgetting that one finger cannot kill a louse.
Camaraderie,
you were the first doctrine of social order,
the original principle of natural justice:
hear the other,
for he is your brother.
Without you,
law becomes cold,
justice becomes distant,
and society becomes a gathering of strangers.
So I ask,
not merely as a poet,
but as a student of men and their laws,
Where did you go, camaraderie?
And if indeed you are gone,
then what remains of us
but bodies sharing space,
and souls living in exile?
Or perhaps,
as the elders would whisper,
that which is lost in the morning
may yet be found before nightfall.
If only we remember
how to sit again,
how to listen again,
how to belong again.
Evan Sande Ndahura is a Ugandan political and legal commentator, columnist, poet, and social justice advocate whose writings focus on governance, constitutionalism, democracy, and the political economy of power in Africa. He is widely published on issues of judicial accountability, electoral justice, human rights, and institutional reform, with a particular emphasis on Uganda’s political and legal systems. Ndahura writes from a Pan-African critical perspective, interrogating the failures of state institutions and the lived realities of ordinary citizens under entrenched systems of power. He believes that the liberation of Africa will occur through a mighty pen, not the gun.
