Miss Bankie is just used to giving that it has now become a part of her life. Meriam Greenland-James is known by many in Salem/Runaway Bay, St Ann area as Miss Bankie. The people she helps don’t even know her name, but they expect to see her at least once a week with a meal.
Well, she has been giving for years and it has helped form her way of life for the last several years in her own community of Back Street, Salem, St Ann.
And, Meriam Greenland-James has been giving to the most needy, even people some consider dangerous.
Her background possibly helped develop her compassion. “For 25 years I was a caregiver in the United States,” she said, speaking of her work in Middletown, New York.
A Baptist, baptized in 1967, she had left Salem in 1972 and returned to Jamaica in 1998.
In the US, Miss Bankie had been associated with the Lighthouse Ministry, that through its outreach project, also brought assistance to Jamaica.
That organization was one of several that assisted Jamaica, after the country was hit hard by Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. She continued some of that public voluntary work when she returned, under the umbrella of the Lighthouse Ministry, giving to the St Ann Infirmary and the Women’s Centre.
Later, in 2010, when there was no organizational support, she went out without giving to indigent people in the Salem area. Every other Wednesday, she provides soup, and on Sundays makes dinner for three street people. That’s done from her own meal and taken to them by her. She knows where to find them on the streets.
“I do it from my heart. I have a soft heart for people who are indigent” said Miss Bankie.
Asked if she gets thanks from the people to whom she gives the meals, she said, “They don’t tell you thanks, very few will say thanks.” She shrugs as if to say that doesn’t matter. In fact she remembers offering soup to one of the street people who rejected it, asking for something else.
What she cares more about is how the street people are treated. “Many Jamaicans have a nasty attitude to them,” she said, pointing out that people throw stones at the street people, beat them and even set them alight. She says she understands that some have been violent, but she says they need to be treated with compassion and kindness. “I don’t meet upon any that is scary. If they ask you for something and you don’t have it or don’t want to give them, you don’t have to curse them or hit them,” she said.
She said people have to use their discretion or discernment in approaching street people, or the mentally ill and should get help doing so if scared.
Miss Bankie believes she will help for as long as she can.
