Digging Holes in Tomorrow

By JOHN KAMULEGEYA

"The holes we dig today are not just in the earth—they are in our children's tomorrow."

From acclaimed environmental storyteller John Kamulegeya, Digging Holes in Tomorrow is a stirring and poetic exploration of how human progress has come to cost the planet its peace. Through vivid storytelling and grounded research, Kamulegeya weaves together the voices of miners, mothers, activists, and dreamers whose lives are entangled in the global web of extraction—from the cobalt mines of Congo to the forests of the Amazon, from the oil fields of Nigeria to the coral reefs of the Pacific.

Each chapter exposes a new layer of humanity's uneasy relationship with the Earth: the silent poisoning of rivers, the displacement of Indigenous communities, the slow violence of pollution, and the quiet courage of those who refuse to give up. Yet, amid the devastation, Digging Holes in Tomorrow also sings with hope—celebrating resilience, resistance, and the possibility of redemption.

This is not just a book about environmental destruction. It's a call to conscience—a reminder that sustainability is not a choice for the future but a responsibility of the present. Kamulegeya's prose is both lyrical and urgent, inviting readers to reflect, rethink, and reimagine how we live with the planet that sustains us.

Digging Holes in Tomorrow is perfect for readers of Naomi Klein, Wangari Maathai, and Amitav Ghosh, and for anyone who believes in the power of stories to awaken change.

Powerful. Poetic. Necessary.
This book will move you, challenge you, and remind you that the Earth's story is also your own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: JOHN KAMULEGEYA
• Release date: Oct 30, 2025
• ISBN: 9781257075515

Book preview

DIGGING HOLES INTOMORROW

BY JOHN KAMULEGEYA CHRISESTOM

LEGAL INFORMATION

COPYRIGHT © 2025

DIGGING HOLES IN TOMORROW JOHN KAMULEGEYA .C.

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E-mail: [e-mail]

This book is written with pure intentions: without intentionally attacking any individual, group of people, or organization specifically. Its purpose is solely to educate and inform, rather than criticizing anyone or anything in particular.

However, if it appears otherwise, it is unintentional. NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed,

or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, E-mail:[e-mail]

EDITED BY:

Maurice Muganzi

BOOK DESIGN AND LAYOUT BY:

Charles Kyambadde COVER DESIGN BY:

O. Baraza Alex

First Printing Edition, October 2025

DEDICATION

This book is lovingly dedicated toMother Earth, who continues to feed, heal, and hold us even as we dig, pillage, and wound herheart.

Those on the frontlines of extraction, whose lives bear the scars of mining – like indigenous communities defending their ancestrallands.

It is for dreamers and doers, leaders and learners. For anyone who believes that economic prosperity should never come at the cost of our shared tomorrow.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank God for the gift of this beautiful earth, the home He lovingly created for us to live, breathe, and thrive. May we never forget His call to care for it. As the Bible remind us: The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. –Genesis 2:15 (NIV)

I thank my late Grandfather Njuba Kamulegeya Chrysostom for his unconditional love and for his unwavering faith in me. There’s so much to thank my entire family for, but I thank them for being able to understand my profession and commitments that come along with it.

I am very lucky to have Manager Bongole Patrick, who truly believes in me and my potential – no thank you is big enough for supporting me both personally and professionally.

My deepest thanks to Chris Ssali, whose reminder of mining’s environmental

toll awakened the spirit to write this book.

Thank you, Joel Ssemwogerere, for taking me in your truck to the sand mines and quarry sites and helping me gather the stories and research I needed.

I want to thank Mr. Sercan Kocer from Turkey who gave up some of his valuable time to give me information about the mining regulatory frameworks.

Deep gratitude to Takilambudde David for helping shape the title and for being an ever-avid reader of my words.

Immense gratitude to Lugonvu Edgar for warmly welcoming me into environmental spaces through a volunteering placement at Margarethe Environmental Foundation in 2022.

Some of the names without whom I consider my environmental journey incomplete and bland are Jotham Alinaitwe, Raymond Ntambazi, Robert Ntambi, Hannington Sserwanga, Munesuishe Chiveso, Joseph Silali, Victoria N Kinobe, Nyongarwiza Queen, Nakyobe Daisy, Sharon Natukunda, Andjelija Kedzic, Israeli Ikani, Mayor Bakitte Nakazzi Musoke, Muliisa Emmanuel, Martha Musiimire, Swabra Mandela, Lindah Namulindwa, and Moses Ssekyanzi, Andrew Emor.

I am grateful to Lutwama Kenmark for being a wonderful company.

INTRODUCTION: THE SLOW VIOLENCE OFPROSPERITY

The holes humans dig are too often scars. They begin as promises-bright pledges of prosperity, development, and progress–and end as wounds that never fully close. Beneath every glittering smartphone, every concrete skyline, every breath of electricity in our cities lies a pit, a shaft, a tunnel carved into the Earth’s fragile crust. We live on a planet whose bones have been cracked open for our convenience, whose rivers have been diverted for our comfort, whose skies have been poisoned for our wealth. To know this truth is to recognize that extraction is not simply the removal of stone or ore; it is the slow unraveling of the future, a quiet violence whose echoes will outlast us.

Resource extraction has always been presented as an engine of human triumph. Nations rise on it; markets depend on it; livelihoods are secured by it. Mines create jobs, oil wells feed economies, and minerals drive the clean-energy revolution we claim will save us. Even critics concede that the world is built on minerals; even the food on our tables owes something to mining’s reach. But beneath this logic of necessity lies a deeper reckoning. What we dig from the earth we also dig from our children’s tomorrow. I prefer peace, wrote Thomas Paine, but if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace. His words, meant to rally against political tyranny, now sound like a plea to confront the tyranny of extraction. If sacrifice is inevitable, let it be ours, not theirs.

The effects of mining are rarely sudden; they creep. Mountains flattened, valleys filled with toxic sludge, forests razed, aquifers laced with heavy metals–these are catastrophes not measured in headlines but in lifetimes. Abandoned mines in the United States still leak fifty million gallons of poisoned water every single day, a ghostly inheritance of forgotten profits. Children in Zambia’s Kabwe carry lead levels ten times above

the recommended maximum, their blood a silent record of decisions made decades before their birth. In West Papua, the world’s largest gold mine pours millions of tons of waste into once-pristine rivers, its legacy written in the slow death of fish and the quiet desperation of displaced families. These are not accidents; they are consequences. The violence is slow, but it is violence nonetheless.

And yet, to many, extractions remains a lifeline. A miner’s wage may feed a household when no other work exists. A government rich in oil may promise schools, roads, and hospitals that would otherwise remain dreams. Communities living atop copper or cobalt deposits may see only the chance to escape poverty. This is the concession we must acknowledge: mining can nourish even as it poisons, enrich even as it enslaves. To reject it outright is to dismiss the hunger of those who depend on it. But to embrace it blindly is to betray the generations who will inherit the poisoned soil and empty rivers. Between these truths lies the hard terrain of justice.

The scars of extraction are not evenly distributed. Remote villages bear the costs while distant capitalist count the profits. Rivers in Gabon and forests in Madagascar suffer so that boardrooms in New York and Shanghai can celebrate quarterly gains. In the Niger Delta, oil spills blacken the earth while corporate logos gleam in the language of sustainability. Companies sponsor clinics and schools to soften resistance, even as their drills bit deeper into ancestral lands. Bureaucracies speak of lessons learned, as if displacement were a technical problem to be refined rather than a moral wound to be healed. Greenwashing promises offsets-destroy here, protect there-but no amount of biodiversity credits can restore a mountain or resurrect a poisonedstream.

The most dangerous truth is not that mining destroys, but that it does so gradually, with a patience that disarms. Unlike a hurricane or an earthquake, extraction unfolds in slow motion, allowing its perpetrators

to slip away before the full cost is known. A valley becomes a pit. A stream becomes a slurry. A generation becomes a casualty. By the time the disaster is visible, it’s already irreversible. This is the slow violence of extraction: attritional, incremental, and almost invisible until it iseverywhere.

Yet the future is not preordained. Humans dug these holes; humans can choose where to stop. The same ingenuity that drills into the deepest seabeds can design energy systems that spare the earth. The same courage that fights for profit can fight for restraint. To imagine