Barack Obama

They met living heroes of the movement against South Africa's system of racial separation, including Mandela himself, who spent 27 years in prison for conspiring to abolish apartheid, and former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, another elder of the movement. They met Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, and Antoinette Sithole, whose 13-year-old brother, Hector Pieterson, became a symbol of the fight against apartheid when he was gunned down by police in the black township of Soweto in June 1976 as students protested peacefully against the white government.

Malia and Sasha painted and played dancing games with children at several other stops. At a day-care center in the Johannesburg shantytown of Zandspruit, they and their mother took turns reading Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" to a group of 3- and 6-year-olds. Many people were surprised to hear the girls' voices; they almost never talk aloud in public. Both read their parts with gusto.