Between 2000 and 2004, nearly 600 refugees arrived from Sudan. In this same time period, officials afforded sanctuary to a group of 520 members of a profoundly persecuted group of Somalis from the Bantu clan.

It is this population that proves most vexing for officials.

They might not know how to use a toilet or a light switch or a doorknob.

There might be beds for everyone in the apartment, but they sleep together on the living room floor.

After a few short months of orientation, English classes and financial assistance, they are, as one state employment worker says, "dumped into the morass that is America."

Some might say it is a lot better than where they came from. That may be. But it is still foreign, still overwhelming, still scary.

"Wouldn't it feel like you were dropped off on another planet?" Valley Mental Health's Webb asked.

The influx of Sudanese and Somali residents has caused education, housing and resettlement officials to remake the way refugees are integrated into their Utah homes.

"This group is really the most challenging of all that we've had," said Norman Nakamura, state coordinator of refugee resettlement. "They really have highlighted some of our gaps."

Gaps in the way young people are taught. Gaps in the duration of resources for refugees who know only how to live off the handouts given in refugee camps. Gaps in housing services. Gaps in the abilities of anyone to bridge the cultural divide.

As a Catholic Community Services caseworker, Koffi Djagba is on the front lines of refugee resettlement. Africans — specifically some Sudanese and Somali groups — have a hard time finding jobs, and employers are reluctant to hire them, said Djagba, himself a refugee from the African country of Togo.

Refugees from these populations do not integrate well into the white community here, he said. "They are not doing that good."

Cassie Babowsky is more blunt.

"It's just too much of a jump for the adult generation," said Babowsky, who works with a large group of Sudanese refugees once a week.

"I don't think they will ever make it," she said. "The children are a different story."

It is like Lavinia Limon, director of the national Office of Refugee Resettlement, said, "With every new refugee community that we settle, the system has to reinvent itself."

Friends of Utah refugees find that to be true.

Babowsky calls the refugee placement system a "complex, convoluted thing."

"All the resettlement groups are doing the best they can but with limited resources."

"We have an invisible refugee community in Salt Lake City," said Andrea Globokar, who helps coordinate volunteers for a day care that caters to African refugee children.

"We give a lot of lip service to diversity, but we really aren't doing all we can."