It was now nearly 11 p.m., and the airport stood eerily hushed. The wind was hurtling off the prairie, rattling the broad windows, while tendrils of snow snaked across the tarmac. The usual gaggle of briefcase-toters and college kids filed from the gate and then, a head above the rest, came the three brothers -- Peter, Maduk and Riak -- each one long-limbed and lanky, with flashing eyes and dark African skin and wearing a quiet and unreadable expression. (At the request of resettlement agencies, the refugees' last names are not used here.) They came, as most of the Lost Boys had, with hopes of furthering their education and with worries, too, having heard rumors that America was a land covered in ice and darkness and that black boys could not walk with white girls without getting shot. Cultural orientation class had taught them a few things -- that houses would have many rooms, that women held the same jobs as men -- but like the cold, this was all still inconceivable. The words describing America had piled up without real meaning: freedom, democracy, a safe place, a land with food enough for everyone.

Each brother wore a thin gray sweatsuit issued by the State Department, along with a pair of flimsy white canvas sneakers. Each carried his precious immigration documents in a plastic bag. Maduk, 17, and Riak, 15, appeared petrified and uncertain of what was to happen next, but Peter Dut, who is small-framed with a high forehead and a thoughtful demeanor that bespeaks the fact that he has been in charge of his family since turning 12, stepped forward. He pumped the hand of Michelle Irmen, a 25-year-old caseworker from Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, who stood smiling nervously. As she started to usher the three boys toward a pile of winter coats and hats she had bought for them earlier that day, she realized that Peter was not following. He was instead studying the black night and spiraling snow through the airport window, puzzled, remembering possibly what that businessman in Minneapolis said about surviving Fargo. ''Excuse me,'' he said, worriedly eyeing the dark ice-covered plains of his new American home. ''Can you tell me, please, is it now night or day?''

This is a stove burner. this is a can opener. This is a brush for your teeth. The new things came in a tumble. The brothers' home was a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment in the basement of a sterile-looking complex on Fargo's south side, for which they would pay $445 a month. It had been stocked by a resettlement agency employee, primarily with donations from area churches and businesses, and the randomness reflected as much: there were two bundt pans, six tubes of toothpaste and no towels or cutting knives. Nonetheless, it was a good start. A loaf of white bread sat on the counter alongside a bunch of ripe bananas. There were cans of beans, a jumbo box of Corn Flakes, tea bags, a modest collection of mismatched dishes and a gallon of whole milk in the refrigerator.

Another caseworker, an energetic and somewhat impatient Somalian man named Yusuf Ibrahim, worked the kitchen faucet for Maduk and Riak's benefit, speaking in loud, deliberate English. ''Hot. Cold. On. Off. Do you see?'' Maduk, whose wide-set eyes and broad cheekbones give him a sweetly soulful appearance, nodded carefully, as Riak, whose face still carries a childlike roundness, giggled behind him. Each boy then took a turn at the sink, awkwardly shoving the faucet handle to and fro.

Back in the living room, the quick-moving Ibrahim emptied a garbage bag full of donated clothing on the couch: a couple of weathered three-piece suits and some polyester pants and short-sleeved pastel shirts. Most of it looked to have come straight from the closet of an elderly man, one who wintered in Miami, no less. Watching young Maduk check the size of a rumpled shirt against his spidery shoulders, I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling, one I would have more than once during my time in Fargo. I fully understood that these boys were lucky, that there were thousands of Sudanese left behind in Kakuma -- and millions of refugees stuck in camps across the globe -- but still I could imagine, painfully, the small indignities and cultural stumbling blocks that lay ahead. As petty as this seems, the feel-good power of American charity was lost on me the second I imagined Maduk showing up for his first day of high school dressed in government-issue white canvas boat shoes and a shirt better suited for a retiree on a cruise ship.

Someone more versed in refugee politics might point out that these kids have spent most of their lives as the beneficiaries of first-world donations, and they are obviously fortunate for it. According to State Department estimates, the combination of war, famine and disease in southern Sudan has killed more than two million people and displaced another four million. The Kakuma Refugee Camp has no less than eight international aid organizations operating within its fences, with the United Nations providing subsistence-level food rations for the 65,000 refugees from seven African nations currently living there. What little clothing they have came mostly from American church drives, and as a result, the boys in Fargo had a surprisingly refined sense of what could pass for cool. The following day, when another bag of clothes arrived at the apartment, Riak immediately pounced on a sleeveless Denver Nuggets jersey, while Maduk contented himself with a pair of ill-fitting jeans.

That the boys are accustomed to receiving aid concerns some of those who have helped provide it. ''They're going from an environment where you've basically been given everything at the camp to an environment where you have to work, you have to produce,'' says Steve Redding, who directs the Kenya and southern Sudan programs of International Rescue Committee. ''It's a huge leap.'' And if my first impulse was to want to shelter Peter, Maduk and Riak from the shock of this transition, Ibrahim, who arrived as a refugee from Somalia in 1996, took an unsparing, sink-or-swim approach. Clearly, he had had to wrestle with everything from can openers to food stamps himself at one point, and he had muddled through. In addition to working as a Lutheran Social Services case manager, Ibrahim runs a small African import business in Fargo, and like any good American entrepreneur, he conducts much of his business on a cell phone while driving his S.U.V.