Rehema Mdame walked off the plane in late January 2004, shivering cold and in her bare feet, with her 4-year-old daughter wrapped up on her back and her 6- and 9-year-old sons by her side.

She was among the first Somali Bantu to arrive in Roanoke, and she knew no English, not even "Hello."

It was 11:30 at night, and volunteer Linda Malone didn't like what she saw. She remembers hanging back at the airport while a rush of Refugee and Immigration Services workers and a translator engulfed the family, handing out treats and giving them the traditional Somali greeting: a two-sided hug.

Malone, a no-nonsense New York native, doesn't do hugs. The 53-year-old mother of two doesn't approve of caffeine-laden chocolate bars and Cokes, either - not this late at night.

She noticed the 6-year-old boy shaking.

She sensed that Rehema (pronounced "Ra-HE-ma") was thinking: Who are these people, and what have I done?

Over the next several months, Malone would often think the same thing. When Rehema resisted her do-gooder offerings, which was more often than not, Malone asked herself: Who is this woman, and what have I done?ring in the Somalis and there goes Roanoke."

That was the headline on a letter to the editor that ran last year when it was announced that Roanoke would become home to 200 Somali Bantu, an African clan that has endured centuries of displacement and persecution. Though they didn't succeed in blocking the refugees' arrival - as one community in South Carolina did - some Roanokers complained to city officials and wrote angry letters.

Linda Malone did not. The letters sent this self-described "mother from hell" straight to Barbara Smith, director of Roanoke's Refugee and Immigration Services.

Sign me up, she said.

Decades before, Malone had begun mentoring single moms for the Turning Point domestic violence shelter and Child Health Investment Partnership, the medical program for low-income kids. As her teenage son had put it, partly teasing: "Good job with the mothering thing. ... Now, why don't you go find someone else to mother?"

Malone wasn't the only one who called that week. Entire church congregations volunteered to take on the Bantu. Retirees pledged to become tutors, and at least $5,000 arrived in checks. Several immigrants living in Blacksburg - including graduate students at Virginia Tech - signed on, too.

"That first letter to the editor was some of the best recruiting we've ever done," Smith said.

Along with caseworkers from Smith's office, volunteers such as Malone are the refugees' first window into America. They're a mainstay at Terrace Apartments, a 225-unit Raleigh Court complex where refugees have long co-existed with working-class Americans and immigrants from all over the world. While some are English tutors who come twice a week, mentors like Malone tend to always be on call.

In her 20 years of managing Terrace, Suzan Graham has witnessed the hand-holding that has transformed many an immigrant group. "First they're always teaching them and helping them," she said.

"Then they take off their training wheels, and off they go."

But would Rehema recover from all her falls? Malone wasn't sure.

She remembers introducing her to her two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of Terrace - a palace compared to the one-room mud hut she was used to. Somali caseworker Hussein Joffei gave her a primer on the stove and toilet the night she arrived, and Malone hung her shower curtain up the next day.

When the water came out of the wall, the whole family cheered. It must be like moving to another planet, Malone imagined.

She had thought she knew what she was in for when she took on the assignment: driving Rehema to doctor appointments, filling out school field trip forms, writing checks - generally running interference in this strange new land.

The only thing she'd requested was that her family be small enough to fit in her Toyota Camry. Rehema and her three children just exactly fit.

Though no one at the refugee office had known of her condition, before long Rehema's belly began to swell.

At 27, she was without a husband. She was pregnant again.

And though for months Rehema refused to even crack a smile at her, Malone was her only friend in the world.

A stubborn match

Malone's husband, Patrick, referred to Rehema's look as her "mean face." It appeared when Linda Malone nagged her to attend her English class. It appeared - with a jealous pout - when Malone offered one of her Somali Bantu neighbors a ride to the store.

One day, when caseworker Joffei took the kids for their shots, Malone asked if she could copy the immunization records for her file.

Maya, Rehema said - the Somali word for "no."

Yes, Malone said.

Maya.

Yes.

Maya.

That evening, Malone told her husband she was quitting. He nodded, but he knew that his wife was too stubborn to quit.

Long ago he'd marveled at her response to a CHIP mother, a woman so depressed that she refused to answer her door when Malone came knocking.

Nine years later, Malone still tutors the woman's daughter weekly, still makes her appointments when the children get sick. Last fall, when the bus failed to pick up one of her kids for school, Malone called the transportation department hopping mad.

Depression, Malone could handle.

Red tape, it quavered in her presence.

But her word for Rehema was "shell-shocked" - that was something new.

Malone had read about the Kenyan refugee camps, about the killing and the rapes. She'd looked up the Somali Bantu on the Internet and attended programs on resettlement issues.

What really happened to Rehema in Africa? Malone wanted desperately to know.

But she had learned another valuable lesson with the CHIP mother: Sometimes it was better not to ask questions.

When Rehema was ready to talk, the story would come out.

Slowly adjusting

In the spring of 2004, several Bantu men found work immediately cleaning nursing homes, building couches and restocking grocery shelves. But the women - many of them widows with multiple children - were isolated at home.

In the early days, Rehema stood alone by her apartment window at Terrace watching for Joffei's familiar van or, as was more often the case, Malone's silver sedan.

Her children weren't faring much better. Unaccustomed to their own space and their own beds, they piled next to Rehema on the floor, sometimes crying all night.

At Virginia Heights Elementary School, 6-year-old Abdirahin and 9-year-old Abdullahi hid under their desks and threw things. Unfamiliar with restrooms, they sometimes squatted to relieve themselves on the floor.

Though Malone repeatedly showed Rehema how to do the laundry, classmates complained about the boys' stinky clothes. "We had parents sending in bags of hand-me-downs for the kids," recalled Judy Marlow, the school's English Language Learners teacher. "It took me two weeks just to get Abdirahin to go to class without crying."

In her 28 years of teaching, Marlow had never faced such a challenge. "When the Bantu arrived, everything in my teaching life changed," she said. "They had a total lack of experience, not just in school, but in Western civilization."

One day Abdirahin got so frustrated trying to color that he let fly an expletive of the worst kind. Where he'd heard it, Marlow couldn't guess; but she knew what had to be done.

She sent him to the principal's office, where he was made to sit facing the wall all afternoon - and promptly fell asleep. "Being in a completely different culture, they were exhausted and scared all the time," she said.

Lesson plans that had worked with the earlier refugees from Bosnia - most of them westernized and used to attending school - no longer applied. So Marlow started from scratch, bringing in food, games, music, her own children's old toys.

She read them a book about Oscar the Grouch, then brought in ice cream, chocolate sauce and - following the silly story line - pickles and sardines. "When I opened the sardines, they were so excited. 'Fish! Fish!' They wanted to eat it."

Though she winced as she assembled it, Marlow gave them each a sardine sundae. The kids gobbled it up.

Immersed in English all day long, Rehema's sons slowly began to adjust. They learned to do their homework at dusk, their papers splayed on the living-room windowsill; like many Bantu not used to electricity, Rehema rarely turned on her lights.

Marlow went home every night exhausted. "It was an incredibly hard year, but I tell you: It was the best teaching I've ever done," she said.

"It brought me to life."Learning Rehema's story

The baby was due in July, and Linda Malone was a mess. She worried that Rehema, having delivered her first three in a mud hut, would not call when the contractions began. "I just knew she'd have the baby in her apartment," Malone said.

Malone called so often to check on her that finally, through an interpreter, Rehema said: Relax. When I'm ready, I'll call you.

They'd had six months of near-daily contact, and the only thing they had in common was stubbornness.

But that became the base of their bond. Malone had sensed early on that Rehema felt abandoned. As Rehema would later explain: "There was nobody ahead of me and nobody with me.

"I was like someone who was in a place that was very dark."

When the saga finally emerged, Malone understood the extent of her darkness:

Thirteen when the Somali civil war broke out, Rehema had lost both of her parents on the same day - her father killed by soldiers, her mother from the shock of finding him dead.

Rehema and her five siblings fled on foot to a refugee camp in Kenya. Their journey took eight days and was fraught with wild animals, soldiers shooting at them and sick children being left behind in the bush.

She married her first husband, the father of her eldest three children, in the camp. He died of likely appendicitis in 2000.

When Rehema came to Roanoke, her second husband - and the father of her baby-to-be - was sent to Ohio with his other wife. Polygamy is illegal in the United States, but many African refugees still wrestle with its centuries-old grip.

Malone now understood Rehema's anger and depression.

And Rehema had finally figured out Malone: She was her lifeline.

If one of the kids had a fever at night, all Rehema had to do was call, and Malone would show up at the dark apartment with her thermometer and flashlight.

When the kids were sick, Malone drew pictures of a boy or a girl on their medicine bottles to indicate who took what. It was Malone who insisted that a doctor check on the odd gait in 4-year-old Fatuma's walk, most likely a developmental delay.

Malone made sure the school knew that Muslim kids got the beef hot dogs instead of pork. And she was the one whom teacher Marlow called - not Rehema - when the kids came to school wearing the same dirty clothes.Bringing new life

Late July 5, just as Malone was settling into bed, Rehema phoned: The baby was coming; it was time.

Like a first-time expectant father, Malone felt her stomach sink.

At Terrace, she found Rehema on the floor moaning, her legs in the air and two Bantu neighbors at her side. The contractions were coming strong, some less than a minute apart.

The women wrapped her in a sheet and helped her down the stairway; her water broke halfway down the stairs.

Malone sped to the emergency room, where she dropped Rehema off, explained the situation and left to park her car.

Stepping off the elevator at labor and delivery, the first thing she heard was her name in a terrified Somali accent: "Leenda! Leenda!"

Many Bantu arrive suspicious of doctors and hospitals; in the Kenyan refugee camps, word spread that they should avoid surgery because American doctors steal organs.

Taking Rehema for blood work and immunizations had been difficult, but it was nothing compared to this.

A half-hour later and without so much as an aspirin for the pain, Rehema's baby girl arrived.

When the doctor asked permission to stitch her up, Malone tried to translate, using hand gestures and simple words.

Maya, Rehema said, shaking her head.

But the doctor persisted, asking Malone to call another Somali caseworker and have her translate over the phone.

Rehema held her ground - maya, maya - until the doctor put the needle down. The episiotomy would heal on its own.

Later, a nurse came back to check on her. "Has she decided yet on the baby's name?" she asked.

Malone hadn't thought about it.

But clearly Rehema had. She looked at her mentor, then back at the nurse and, with the slightest smile, gave her new American baby an old American name: Linda.

Malone couldn't believe her ears.

After me?

When she suggested that Rehema sleep on it - decide the next day after a night's rest - it was maya all over again. Rehema's mind was set.

It was 2 in the morning before Malone crawled back into bed.

Exhausted, elated and completely stunned, she told her husband the news.

He shook his head, smiling - as if he'd known it all along.

"Might as well start the college fund now," he said.

On her own

By the end of the year, Rehema could read short sentences, tell time, identify her children's names.

Along with 15 or so other Bantu, she attended twice-weekly English classes at Ghent Grace Brethren Church across the street. Her teacher, Laurie Walker Seidel, ranked her among the smartest - though most reserved - in the class.

In February, she surprised Malone with her response to a parent-teacher conference request for Abdirahin; in the past, she'd sent Malone instead.

No, Abdirahin said. His mother didn't need to go.

This time - and in English - Rehema said "yes."

Malone was now ready for Rehema to tackle the next step toward self-sufficiency: finding work.

Late this spring, she sent Rehema off to interview for a $7-an-hour housekeeping job at Brandon Oaks Health Center.

"Talk!" she reminded her. "And don't forget to smile!"

Rehema didn't talk much at the interview, nor did she smile. But resettlement office workers helped her answer the questions and Malone gave her a reference, and she got the job.

On her first day of work, it was Malone who made sure baby Linda was safe with a relative; that the bus driver knew which relative would pick up the older kids at the bus stop.

Having mentored other single moms working low-wage jobs, Malone knew that Rehema's life was about to get complicated.

How will she get to work on Sunday when the buses don't run? With her social service benefits about to be cut, will she earn enough to pay her bills?

Rehema had thought of none of these things.

For the past 24 hours, Malone had thought of nothing else.

"I didn't sleep much at all last night," she said.

Malone drove her to the nursing home and stood back while an experienced employee - a refugee from Liberia, a woman with her own hard-luck story and communication barriers - demonstrated the job in a language that was far more universal than English:

Every room gets a new clean rag.

Garbage cans get emptied first, followed by the cleaning of the sink, toilet, furniture and floors.

It was a lot to remember all in one day, but that was OK. As usual, Malone took notes.

Over the next several weeks, she went over them again and again until, finally, Rehema said, "yes," she understood - another wrinkle nailed in this strange new land.