Uganda. The Pearl Of Africa. Dangerous. Violent. Barren.
Tell your friends and family that you want to go to Uganda and they will probably have some pretty negative comments to make about how it is not safe….
Uganda is a complex, developing nation. But there is so much more to it than that image of a child with huge sad eyes and a swollen belly.
so, What is it actually like to live and work with the living music foundation?
1: The work
Volunteering with the Living Music Foundation, your work day revolves around Music and Empowerment.
Volunteers teach music lessons to disadvantaged people and communities. We believe in the power music has to transform lives, having experienced it for ourselves (That’s why we set up the organisation!)
You will travel with us to women’s refuge groups, orphanages, schools, church groups… or any other community that we work with! This is where most of our training takes place.
Sometimes you may stay at the LMF office to undertake 1-1 music lessons.
read more about the importance of music education here
And the next day you may be with us performing at fancy functions!
If there is something Western Uganda enjoys more than eating Matooke, its a good function!
If there is a wedding, a give away or most any function near our town of Mbarara, you can bet we’ll be performing there…
With the Living Music Foundation, through teaching music lessons volunteers are creating a positive and long lasting impact in our communities- without the damaging voluntourism!
Just musicians sharing music!
HOME life
Some volunteers are actually pretty surprised when they see we have full on houses here!
The most common image of life in Uganda is of hand built huts, like below.
Hut in North Uganda 
Life in a Ugandan Village
However, Uganda has towns and cities too!
The Living Music Foundation volunteers will stay in a house with a local family from Mbarara.
Volunteers will have their own room, and a super lovely and welcoming family.
Here is one our families!
Host families will treat you as one of their own children. As a volunteer you will share meals together, enjoy your evenings together and maybe even go for some weekend excursions!
All of our host families are wonderful and loving people- that’s why we chose them! Some of them are teachers or business people, some of them have farms, we even have some reverends! But they are all local people who want to get to know you.
What better way to learn about a people and their culture than by sharing a house with them!
the food
We already wrote a little blog post about Uganda’s favorite food items!
The photo below is an average lunch time meal in Mbarara.
As you may notice, it is all natural (except maybe the chapatti).
Avocados, tomatoes, rice, nuts, beef, matooke (a steamed banana dish), peas…
The West of Uganda (where our program is based) is rich in variety of yummy nutritious foods! Everything grows abundantly here, fruits, veggies, legumes.
Volunteers need not worry about having enough to eat! If anything, you’ll eat too much as everything is so delicious!
Social life
Mbarara is a large enough city that there is always tons going on! From live local bands playing in the evenings to hiking groups!
Sunrise Hike 
Hiking in Uganda 
Exercise on a hill
A huge group of us get together and hike some of the hills surrounding Mbarara, starting at sunrise! Then we like to do some aerobics at the top of the hill. Much more fun than the gym!
Volunteering with LMF means you’ll always have friends!
Jean and Disan love going for the local bands.
Babrah and Patience always love to go hiking and Innocent is always down to hang out!
The best thing about our group is that we are all young people who like to socialize- who else would start a non profit organisation, travelling everyday to communities to play and teach music!
So, is life here is different to how you imagined it?
We hope you enjoyed this little taster of our volunteer program!
If you want to learn more, click HERE
Impressive invitation, warm and welcoming.
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