While we were settling in to the hostel in Kampala, I realized my iPod was missing. I had been listening to it on the bus, and while both Lauren and I remember me getting it ready to be packed away, it was nowhere to be found.

‘I’ve left it on the bus,’ I realized in horror. Not only had I lost an expensive gift from Lauren and my parents, now I would have no music to listen to for the next six months.

Lauren and I tried calling the Scandanavian Bus phone number, but we couldn’t get through. Lauren wanted to take a cab back into the city to ask see if it had been turned in, but I was sure it was stolen by now and didn’t want to waste more money on expensive taxis.

Lauren convinced me to go - we took a matatu that cost only 30 cents - and we hiked back up to the Scandanavian offices (also discovering our problem from before - the offices had moved since the Lonely Planet had been written).

When we got there, I made Lauren go in and ask - I was too upset to be able to speak to anyone.

“Excuse me,” Lauren said to the woman behind the counter, “I was on the bus from Nairobi and I think I left my walkman - my iPod behind?” She demonstrated headphones.

The woman unhesitatingly reached into a drawer and pulled out my iPod, intact and seemingly untouched.

We were blown away. Someone had just turned it in. We loved Tanzania, we decided, but after this, and the nice man who had walked us all the way to Barclay’s bank (See The Road from Hell), the kindness of Ugandans was blowing us away.

We spent the rest of the hour of daylight we had left exploring the city. We decided we liked it - it was small and cute, but definitely a city. We considered moving to a hotel closer to downtown, but after exploring the area where budget hotels were located (near the bus stations, which was crazy and crowded like NYC’s Chinatown), we decided we would stay at the hostel outside of the city.

We headed back to our hostel and had dinner (Lauren: which included a massive helping of mashed potatoes - yum - and our new favorite, Ugandan Bell Beer). While Lauren and I were taking turns on email, a guy stopped me to ask me if there wireless internet access. I told him there wasn’t, but in the course of the short conversation, it turned out that this guy was Dallas - the guy from Madison, Wisconsin.

Lauren came over shortly and they started reminiscing about their school days. Lauren had already graduated by the time Dallas had transferred to UW-Madison, but by some stroke of fate or irony, they had both lived in the same apartment while going to school there (Lauren: The apartment above Tutto Pasta for all my fellow Badgers. Abby, how weird is that?).

Dallas told us that he had just gotten back from a three-month stint in Ethiopia, where he recently was diagnosed with having Giardia, hookworm and dysentery all at the same time. (See, Mom, it could be worse!) He regaled us with his adventures, including intervening to stop a man who tried to steal his friend’s camera from being beaten to death and then narrowly escaping being stoned to death himself.

He later showed us the nice cottage he had managed to snag at Red Chilies Hostel, where we were staying. We thought it looked like heaven - a living room, dining table, bedroom and large bathroom. We all agreed to meet up the next morning to head to Kampala.

The next morning, Lauren and I confirmed with the staff that they were fully booked (including all of the cottages) and that we’d have to sleep in their dingy dorms. They told us to put our stuff on our beds to mark them as ours. We didn’t like the idea of having our stuff sit out all day unprotected in an unlocked room, so I pulled out my towel and flip flops and Lauren pulled out her toiletries and we left those on our beds. We packed up everything else and had it locked up in a storage room.

In Kampala, we ran errands, trying to sort our airline tickets, dealing with internet issues, shopping for books (that we didn’t buy because they were too expensive). We had lunch at this really cute outdoor café while Dallas showed us pictures from his travels on his laptop, and we showed him our Excel spreadsheet budgets on ours.

When we got back, I discovered that someone had stolen my flip-flops! Granted, I had put them out cause they weren’t worth all that much and if someone stole something, they should steal that - but I was furious.

During dinner, Dallas offered to let us sleep on the couch and floor of his cottage. We decided to take him up on it. That night and the next one, we slept in Dallas’ cottage. Each night we lit the candelabra on the table, dimmed the lights, listened to Dallas’ music (including some hits from his old Madison band) and blogged and played on our laptops. We were really living it up.

In the meantime, we were researching where we would go next. We had planned to go to Lake Victoria and were trying to figure out which island to go to. But when we asked the manager of Red Chilies, he made it sound incredibly difficult to get there (involving having someone carry you on their back through the water and out to a boat - and this is the water that has bilharzia. The manager did say we could swim in the water, though, and just “go to a chemist in six weeks and take some pills” to get rid of the small parasitic snails that would be hatching in our intestines by then. No, thanks.

Another option we found out about was to go south, to the mountains, to Lake Bunyonyi. It was colder there - too cold for mosquitos - which sounded great to us after having been in hot and humid weather for the last two months. We figured out out the bus we needed and got ready to go. At the last minute, Dallas decided to come, too.

And then there were three…