CNN's Soledad O'Brien plays with children in Diepsloot while Journey for Change participant Laura DiFilippi takes her picture.

Soledad O'Brien
CNN Special Correspondent

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Diepsloot is a massive shantytown on the northern edge of Johannesburg, about 30 minutes from the city center.

Cornelius Xulu, a project coordinator with Hope Worldwide points over a low hill to show me the scope of these thousands upon thousands of shacks, made of tin and wood and brick. Many are collapsing, with gaping holes and sagging ceilings.

Cornelius guesses the shack-city goes for 3 miles one direction and several miles the other - an indication of how entrenched the poverty is in this section of the city.

In the shantytowns the poor often pay rent for four tin walls, a mud floor and no utilities.
Here a shack can cost about 350 to 700 rand per month ($47 – $93 USD), which means many families are often too poor to buy food or clothing.

It is in Diepsloot where we start our fifth morning in South Africa, delivering bags of rice, boxes of soup, and packages of toothbrushes to the grannies - women who are raising their grandchildren because their own children have died.

The kids from Bushwick are excited. They've quickly grown to love the act of giving, and there are playful tussles over the soccer balls and toys to hand out to the small children who line the narrow and dusty streets.

Watch CNN's Soledad O'Brien as she travels in South Africa with 30 kids from Malaak Compton-Rock's Journey for Change program.

August 4, 2008

They say jet lag really hits you on the third day in South Africa. If that’s true, I’m dreading tomorrow. We’ve hit the ground running in Johannesburg. Thirty kids from around Bushwick, Brooklyn, matched with 30 college-aged mentors as part of Journey for Change, a program started by Malaak Compton-Rock, that brought disadvantaged kids to South Africa to volunteer. Plus the CNN crew—me, my producer Michelle, photographers Fred, Kevin, Tawanda and our soundtech Ted. Our days are long, our body clocks way off.

But it’s hard to be anything but joyful when you’re surrounded by teenagers discovering and uncovering South Africa. The kids began their service on Monday — and it was a tough day. A visit to an orphanage, filled with young children who’ve been abandoned or lost parents. Some of the babies are HIV positive.

The Journey for Change kids sat with smaller children on their laps, or rocked tiny babies. It was surprising to see the teenagers quickly bond with the babies—it was heartbreaking to leave the babies behind.Later in the day a short ride to the shantytowns that dot Soweto, where the kids were shocked by the depth of poverty of the grannies, raising their grandchildren and sometimes great-grandchildren in tiny rectangular shacks … with holes in the roofs, no food, no heat, no running water, no electricity.

Part of the service is to take notes on what these impoverished families need—so they can go shopping and deliver it tomorrow. It was emotionally wrenching, some of the kids cried while they described having to prioritize the shopping list for their families. The families have nothing, and it seems brutally unfair to have to pick and choose among necessities like warm clothes and food.

We’ve asked the Journey for Change kids, aged almost 12 to 16, to blog about their experiences while they are here in South Africa, to give you a better sense of who they are, what they hope to gain by giving and what changes they expect to bring about in others and hope to see in themselves.