White Utah stuck with Africans without a continent
Toilet water cascaded intothe kitchen an hour before midnight and 14-year-old Theo Ndayishimiyepleaded with 911. Increasingly frustrated, the dispatcher asked whetherhe had called a plumber. “No, we don’t know how to speak English,” the teen answeredduring the April call, trying to explain with words he had learned onlymonths before. “We’re from Africa.”
Minutes later, Salt Lake City Fire Capt. Dennis Sharp and hiscrew pulled up to the tiny Salt Lake City home rented by the family ofeight from Burundi. Mold was growing in the kitchen cupboards, the bathroom andthe bedrooms, health records show. Several windows were broken.
“A mom with no dad and all these kids there, trying to make everythingwork,” Sharp said. “That’s kind of not the American dream, is it?”
Thousands of Utah refugees are living in stark poverty, many bewilderedby the smallest tasks of modern life. A gas stove is a puzzle. Arefrigerator is a mystery: fish and chicken are left in cupboards.Trash is flushed down toilets. Crossing a wide, busy Salt Lake Citystreet can be terrifying.
Some have never held a job and cannot read in any language. With fewskills and little English, they are trapped in the poorest paying work:washing dishes, sorting used clothes. At night, they return tocrumbling homes, some with nearly empty refrigerators. They put as manyas six children to bed in a single bedroom.
Federal financial help is brief. Caseworkers from three agencies areoverwhelmed by refugees’ helplessness: They cannot go on every groceryshopping trip or translate every piece of mail. Yet ignored letters canmean less food and higher rent when refugees lose access to governmentservices.