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The Road to Montrouis Home Page Essays Memoirs Fiction Plays Poetry References
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THE
ROAD TO MONTROUIS By Nancy Babcock Sohlberg In 1854, my great-grandfather, William Meade Jones, a Seventh Day Baptist minister, and his wife, Elizabeth Postelwaite Jones, and daughter, Martha Miriam Jones, (my grand-mother), were sent to Palestine from New York City by the Presbyterian Board of Missions, to establish a small agricultural mission outside Jerusalem. His journals and correspondence, left to my aunt, Elizabeth Cruikshank, of Ottawa, Canada, describe the joys of visiting the holy places and contact with theologians and scholars and becoming fluent in Arabic and Hebrew. His personal letters disclose a respect and concern for his fellow missioners as well as a loving family relationship. Political turmoil and sporadic raids made travel hazardous. The family endured being robbed and burned out of their dwelling, and chronic bouts of malaria and dysentery, but remained cheerful and optimistic until their baby daughter, “Annie- Lizzie”, succumbed to infant diarrhea. This was very hard on ten-year old Martha Miriam who had scarcely left the sickroom, but read and sang to her little sister until she no longer responded. The father’s diary recorded Annie-Lizzie’s burial. “We were such a small, sad procession, going up to the American Cemetery on Mount Sinai. After the little coffin was laid to rest, Miriam refused to come down. She protested .“Annie-Lizzie will be cold and frightened in the dark alone.” My wife was exhausted and sick and couldn’t stay.. I tried to comfort my child saying that Annie was with Jesus now and He was taking care of her but Miriam flared up furiously. “What does Jesus want with Annie-Lizzie? He already has William and Anne (two other children who died in infancy). Jesus doesn’t need any more children. I hate Jesus! I want my Annie-Lizzie back and I want to go back to Haiti . Nobody wants us here!” I had to strike my daughter for her blasphemy, but she turned stubborn and silent. So I sat down with her and we passed the night in lonely silence. Several people passed by with torches and offered food and comfort. They seemed to lift part of our misery on to themselves. In the morning Miriam was content to leave and we came home”. Two years later Miriam’s mother, Elizabeth Postelwaite Jones died of dysentery and was buried in the same plot on Mount Sinai. Her husband and Martha Miriam returned to New York State. After a few years, William was posted to England as pastor of the Mill St. Seventh Day Baptist Chapel in London. He remarried and had two sons, H. Langley Jones and Henry Black Jones. Martha Miriam taught school and married Franklin Babcock, a homeopathic physician, in Morrisville,N.Y. They had a son, Archer Dorval Babcock, my father, a physician and surgeon , and a daughter, Elizabeth Babcock Cruikshank, my aunt, who graduated from Smith College in 1912, married and emigrated to Canada. She named her only daughter Miriam.. I never met Grandmother Miriam who died in 1916, but my father claimed her love of learning had profoundly influenced his life. He also told me of her affection for Haiti, her earliest home. I started going to Haiti for my church in 1978 largely because of Martha Miriam Jones Babcock and her father’s journals. She was born in Port –au-Prince, Haiti in 1846, where her father, William Meade Jones, had established a Seventh Day Baptist mission, and a small school in Port de Paix, in the northern part of the island. Jones was a staunch abolitionist, a strict teetotaler, and defender of the Protestant work ethic. Although Haiti had proclaimed itself a republic in 1804, it had seen nothing but repressive and bloody regimes. Travel between towns was strictly monitored by the militia, and Jones found the nearly 100% Roman Catholic population unsympathetic to a Protestant preacher from a slave-holding nation. He made only one convert, a black man named Dorval, who served him very effectively as a teacher and later as superintendent of his school. Their friendship endured for many years and Miriam chose Dorval for her son’s middle name. Miriam’s early years were a barefoot, carefree existence. She quickly learned the Creole patois of her playmates and enjoyed their lively games and dances but her father, feared their pagan or Voodoo influence, and strictly limited her activities to home and church, or the mission school. Jones was constantly frustrated by the native’s “unresponsiveness, dishonesty and indolence”. When his only son, William, died of dysentery, Jones had to bribe the local authorities for a grave site in the Catholic cemetery, the only consecrated ground available. The Haiti I found in 1978 was not all that different from Miriam Jones’ Haiti. A dictator, “Baby Doc”Duvalier, was “president pour vie”. Police were everywhere. The numbers of the poor and sick had increased almost 100% since Miriam’s time due to the rapidly deteriorating economy. I was part of a team of twenty doctors, nurses, dentists and “go-for’s” from the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, Illinois. Our work was centered around a small dental and medical clinic on the grounds of an old seminary in Montrouis, sixty miles north of Port-Au-Prince. My first task was to get a large supply of vaccines and antibiotics through the larcenous hands of the custom agent at the airport. In fractured French I diverted his attention from the expensive drugs to a large box of VEET-A-MINS, which I promised would improve his digestion and love-life. At least that is what I thought I told him, ( my French was limited), but our precious cargo passed through undisturbed. Flushed with success, we departed for a tour of the Iron Market until the bus arrived to take us to Montrouis. Port-Au-Prince is an olfactory, auditory and tactile experience that none of us were prepared for. Open sewers ran through the streets of downtown with people living on the sidewalks and cooking over charcoal fires. Cripples dragged themselves through the streets begging, and yellow, half-starved dogs fought for every scrap of refuse. The Iron Market was worse! It was packed with humanity in all sizes and conditions, all selling or haggling over hideous scraps of meat, or fly-ridden foodstuffs. I soon became separated from my group and found myself surrounded by beggars and vendors, pawing at my clothes and yelling in my face. “Give me something for I am dying!” I plunged headlong into agoraphobia, (fear of the market place). The oppressive heat, the smells, and the crush of the crowd overwhelmed me and I freaked out. I must have thrown my purse at them screaming, ”Take my money, take anything you want. Oh my God, just leave me alone!”. And he did!! The group heard my screams and rescued me; picking up my purse (which was still intact) and leading me out of that inferno and into the bus for Montrouis. No one mentioned my panic attack and our arrival and the unpacking and settling in seemed to soothe the queer, chilled sensation I was feeling. The first few days passed in a haze of hard work. People arrived by mule or foot before daylight and waited patiently to be seen. I learned a little Creole which helped in triage. We made plans to visit nearby schools and vaccinate the children. I hoped to work away that unpleasant, unsettling God-forsaken feeling that I’d never felt before. That night someone suggested we walk to the village store for a Coke. We walked along in the warm Haitian night, hearing a sort of buzzing, whispering sound as we passed, but seeing nothing. I felt a little hand slip into my left hand. I said nothing. Then another little hand snuggled into my right hand and I heard a soft little voice. “M’ai besoin des bonbons” (I need some candy). I laughed aloud when I realized that all of us were being propelled along the road by child-power. We sang ‘Frere Jacques’ all the way to the candy store. The cold chill was gone and never returned. The rest of our days were occupied in teaching health care to the seminarians, in vaccinations and in visiting schools where I excelled in tooth-brushing instructions in Creole. We gave the children soap and toothbrushes to take home to parents who might never have one. We literally conquered Montrouis by toothbrush! It was pure joy to pass by a house and have a grandmere call out, “Bon jou, Madame”, saluting me with her toothbrush. On another mission to Haiti, I had a different experience, returning from a House Mass with the priest and another nurse. The residents had swept their dirt floor, and placed a cloth and vase of hibiscus blooms on their only table and lit a candle. A rooster and dog observed the ceremony, and a toddler peeked shyly at us from his mother’s skirt. As we walked back, we passed a clearing with a tin-roofed shack and a heap of rubble. An emaciated little girl, with the reddish tinted hair of the malnourished, stood there singing in a sweet, clear voice to a mangy donkey.. We stopped to listen. “Ditez-moi, pourquoi,
Ditez-moi pourquoi, The priest called, “Bien chante, Miriam”. The little girl turned and waved. I caught my breath. She was blind! I believe the most valuable thing we did for the people of Haiti, was not the medicine or skills we brought. After these were gone, they were still sick and needy. I believe it was our entering into their life and sharing their burdens, even for a short time, that will be remembered. I remember the words of William
Meade Jones from that sad vigil on Mount Sinai…“Several people passed by and
offered food and comfort. They seemed to lift part of our misery on to themselves.” Perhaps that’s all we are
called to do - to share the burden and lighten the load. If you have questions or comments send them to Nancy Sohlberg at sohlbenb@eckerd.edu |