Where did you go, camaraderie,
you who once lived in the laughter of evenings,
in the smoke that curled above village fires,
in the rhythm of stories told beneath tired stars?
Where did you go,
when fathers sat cross-legged on woven mats,
passing the calabash from hand to hand,
sharing the bitter-sweet truth of local brew,
while meat crackled gently over open flame?
Back then,
no man carried his burdens alone.
Differences did not grow into walls,
they dissolved in firelight,
settled in dialogue,
and were buried in the soil of understanding.
Brothers argued, yes,
but their anger had boundaries,
their voices never forgot kinship.
A man could offend,
but he could not be cast away.
Where did you go, camaraderie,
now that doors are locked before dusk,
and silence fills compounds once alive with voices?
Now we text what we once spoke,
we assume what we once asked,
we isolate where we once embraced.
The fire still burns,
but no one gathers.
The meat still roasts,
but each eats alone.
The brew still ferments,
but the calabash no longer travels.
We have gained the world, they say,
but lost the village.
Camaraderie,
you were never wealth,
yet you made men rich.
You were never law,
yet you kept peace better than courts.
Now suspicion sits where trust once lived,
and distance has replaced brotherhood.
So I ask again,
not as a poet, but as a witness,
Where did you go, camaraderie?
And more painfully…
will you ever return?
About the Writer
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.
