'Happy Christmas' from our own Archdeacon of West Ham, Elwin Cockett...
The world-wide family of West Ham fans is celebrating in style this Christmas. We’re in the top four – until Boxing Day, at least – and we’re watching the best football we've seen in years, which isn't necessarily something that many of us would have said at the start of the year.That we are a world-wide family is obvious to anyone who has dipped into the KUMB Forum, a melting-pot of miscellany that only Irons fans could create. But I will never forget how the astonishing reach of Hammer-dom was brought home to me a few years ago on a hot, dusty road in, of all places, Ghana.
I was there to visit friends in a town called Akosombo, where I lived for a year as a child when my father was working as a doctor there. We were stuck in a traffic jam, going nowhere, in the intense heat of an African Summer. The only movement was of traders strolling up and down the queue, selling everything from bread to umbrellas. Suddenly, one caught my eye, not because of what she was selling or shouting out, but because of what she was wearing: A West Ham shirt.
We had no language in common, but at the words ‘West Ham' she beamed at me. We were thousands of miles from Upton Park but for a fleeting moment we were two people united by the claret-and-blue.
But there's a far more important story that can be told about Ghana and the generosity of one particular West Ham fan. Last year, on another visit to Akosombo, I watched an amazing Ghanaian teacher, Grace, using books that had been sent to her from East London to teach local children to read. Those children were flocking to her, and she had a book for every one of them, and yet she had nowhere to keep her books except a lock-up shed.
In a rash moment, and remembering the girl in the West Ham shirt, I told Grace that I thought I knew a few kind people in East London who might be willing to contribute something if she ever decided to build a place for her books – a place where children could come and read in safety and where the books would be kept clean and dry. “We could call it ‘Grace's Place'”, I said, getting a bit carried away.
To be honest, when I got home to England, I began to have second thoughts. But as I shared the idea with a few people it started to take off. It was then that a KUMB reader and fellow Irons fan, Gary Stewart – known to some of us as ‘Norf' because he lives ‘up North'- sent me an astonishing gift that changed everything. It was the sort of sum that, in Ghana, makes things happen.
Now ‘Grace's Place' could move from being a dream to becoming a reality. Within months, Grace had acquired the land needed for ‘Grace's Place' in Akosombo. Local workers cleared it and made it ready and then, as further donations came in, the foundations were laid. As other people in East London and elsewhere caught the vision, the walls were built and the roof went on.
Now, incredibly, just 18 months or so since the idea was first raised, ‘Grace's Place' is preparing to open its doors, thanks to the generosity of people in East London and Essex, a good many of them West Ham fans, and especially people like Gary Stewart and his colleagues at CMC Schoolfood, in Manchester, who have just made a further donation of £500 as a Christmas present to the children of Akosombo.
‘Grace's Place' is not quite finished yet. There's some plastering and wiring to be done, and a few doors and windows to be installed. Nevertheless, for those children, as one person told me, ‘it feels like Christmas has come'. In fact, because ‘Grace's Place' is going to be open all year round, it feels like Christmas every day (to quote Roy Wood!).
This is all down to people like you. Whether you're celebrating Christmas, or have been marking Hanukkah, or whatever else, this time of year is about giving. It's about bringing light where there's darkness, and hope where there's despair. And that's just what is happening at ‘Grace's Place'.
West Ham fans are having a great season, and we have plenty to be thankful for, so let's see how generous we can be. You don't have to look far to find people who will be grateful for a bit of kindness, whether we're talking about kids in Africa or the people we live among and call our friends. All it takes from you is a decision to give something, whether it's your time or your money or your skills. Your generosity can make a difference – and is already doing so.
So, with a thank-you to generous Irons fans everywhere, it's ‘Merry Christmas' to every member of the world-wide West Ham family, whether you're in Green Street or Ghana, and here's to the happiest of happy New Years in 2015.
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