85 – Herbalism and Border Violence, Part Two

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose, from the

Solidarity Apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello. Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

This is part two of a workshop that I did called Herbalism and Border Violence.

So I give a kind of, like, longer introduction to the workshop in the last episode.

So please have a listen to that before you listen to this one.

But just, yeah, brief synopsis.

It's about herbalism's role in supporting

refugees use asylum seekers and people on the move across repressive borders.

In introduction to the last episode, I did a little plea for people to become monthly

supporters of the Mobile Herbal Clinic Calais.

So I will put a link to that in the show notes

too.

But yeah, please have a listen to the first episode first because it kind of gives the

context for this one where I'm diving into more detail about the project and all the

things.

Okay, thanks for listening.

Take care.

Bye.

Hello.

All right, so now I'm going to talk about the Mobile Herbal Clinic Calais.

So lots of.

Well, not lots, but a number of different

herbalists worked in France in various kind of refugee encampments.

There was a really huge camp, kind of colloquially called the jungle, which was

absolutely massive, which the French state, like, completely demolished and evicted.

And ever since then, people have been living in these, like, tiny encampments around the

city facing, like, very consistent, persistent evictions, which I talked about in the

introduction to the Border Regime section.

So, yeah, lots of.

Well, these different herbalists had been

working over time.

And then there was a decision by a herbalist

called Melissa Ronaldson to, yeah, to try and make the clinic a kind of regular thing as its

own agency.

She used to go out with other projects, other first aid groups, and kind of do herbal

medicine, like, adjacently to them, like in, you know, together with them.

But she would be the herbalist and they'd be doing dressings and things.

And then, yeah, a decision was taken to.

To kind of set it up as its own group.

And it's kind of been a huge learning process since then, really, in terms of developing

our.

Developing our values, developing our training

models and our kind of referral systems.

Like, all of this stuff has been a work in

progress.

So Melissa and another volunteer who's no longer with us called Jean Louis, went out in

So it's kind of the second trip when I was

still a student and I'll talk about the different roles that the project have.

I was, I developed this role as the kind of field coordinator.

That's definitely not always been possible.

It's very difficult to get people that are available because of responsibilities or other

jobs, especially clinical supervisors like GPs and things.

Yeah. And you know, it's very.

Some.

It's somehow almost easier to recruit someone that's going to volunteer somewhere for three

months and then disappear rather than someone that could come out one week a month, if that

makes sense.

But the first week of the month is when the Red Cross aren't working.

So we kind of for a while were like one of the only medical groups in the field and obviously

So yeah, our kind of first winter, like

October, November, December, January, we're going out consistently and then the pandemic

hit and then.

Yeah, I'll talk, I can talk about that in more depth.

But we basically were one of the only medical groups still operating.

We kind of took the risk as grassroots volunteers whereas other charities had to

stop.

And yeah, and then we kind of supported people through the pandemic and then yeah, just kind

of had like more and more challenges with, with funding and things and you know,

different people burning out or leaving.

Like Melissa left and that was a challenge.

And so yeah, there's like lots of things have

happened and we're still in a place where we're trying to improve, we're trying to

restructure.

You know, I'll talk about some of the strengths and weaknesses of this kind of

model.

But we have consistently record recorded how many people we've seen.

We don't write people's names down, but we have a kind of tick system where we tick a

little box on a clipboard of.

Okay, we've seen someone with like a foot care issue or a wound issue or a cold and we'll

tick that so that way we can track our numbers.

Something I developed.

I'm a bit obsessed with spreadsheets and

stuff.

So yeah, I, I know with certainty that we've

And yeah, we.

I think I've got a slide somewhere.

Okay.

No, so we used to be called Herbalist Borders

Calais.

But there was some kind of like bureaucratic

dynamics with the American organization who have their own like non profit model and it

wasn't working for them, that we were doing stuff kind of autonomously.

So we kind of, yeah, created our own.

Our own name, if that makes sense, that people

could kind of identify with as well.

So this is the clinic.

We have used different vehicles.

Over here you can see our kind of internal medicine station.

So we've got drawers of all different medicines for all different complaints.

I'm going to talk about health conditions in a minute.

We have a tea urn which is really popular with kind of hot lemon and ginger, for example.

Oh, excuse me.

We have a first aid kind of external care station and you can't see in the picture, but

we have a four or five chairs where people can sit down, where we do foot baths, foot

cleaning, all sorts of first aid things, skin conditions, stuff like that.

Bandaging, things like that.

Yeah. And this is basically super versatile.

We can just rock up and at a kind of.

On the outskirts of one of the encampments and people can come along and kind of access care

with us.

We also.

Yeah, I'll talk about all the other things we do, but ultimately it's like mobile, right.

It's a mobile clinic that we can drive around and that's really important because the sites

are constantly changing because of like these relentless police evictions.

Yeah. So our kind of.

This is us with a. In Dunkirk where we luckily

were on some concrete and we've got borrowed this like gazebo because, yeah, it gets very

rainy in France.

I'm a little bit of a weather charm though.

Like the trips I go are always like dry and

sunny.

It's just absolute fluke.

But anyway, okay, so our objective is to deliver first aid and acute medicines, self

care support and preventative medicines, skilled and appropriate triage referral and

hospital advocacy and herbal medicine support for volunteers from other agencies.

So, yeah, so we work as like a team of four.

I'll talk about these four roles in a minute.

But our focus is really on kind of like acute care.

So, for example, say someone comes and they're like presenting with acid reflux or something.

Like, we're not.

Not.

We don't have the resources to do like a comprehensive consultation for an hour and

analyze their diet and, you know, get blood tests and GI stool samples and, you know,

things that you would do in a herbal medicine or functional medicine practice.

Like, it's really kind of like, what are you experiencing right now and how can we support

you with this constant eye on.

Have I got it here?

No, like this constant eye on.

Do we need to get you to hospital?

So it's kind of not a red herring.

But like, I think people come and they think,

oh, you know, it's really wonderful.

You're just giving out herbs or something.

Like you're just handing out tea.

And it's just.

It's totally not like that.

Like, it's, you know, the main.

If we can spot someone that week who's got a

serious issue and get them to hospital, we have done our job.

Do you know what I mean? So what we're constantly thinking about is

looking for clinical red flags.

So, for example, we'll triage people quite a

lot.

Like our main sort of bread and butter is

upper respiratory infections, right.

Coughs called flu.

And we have like a whole kind of algorithm of

different questions we'll ask people.

And what we're looking for are people that

it's not just something they've had for a couple of days.

You know, maybe it's something that they've had for a few months or maybe they've been in

the sea or.

You know, we had a guy who had, for example,

TB who could hardly breathe.

It was at the beginning of COVID Everyone thought, oh, it's Covid.

And, you know, got his.

Anyway, I'm going into detail, but basically did his obs and stuff.

Spoke to the clinical supervisor.

She was like, yeah, get him to hospital.

So that's what we did.

So what we're trying to do is advocate for

people to get to hospital.

You know, a lot of the guys, like the refugees living in the area, like, they don't know the

different services that are available.

They don't know that it's possible to access

La Paz, which is like the free clinic where you can go if you don't have papers.

Yeah, there's, you know, there's some issues with hospitals and cops.

Like, there are anywhere.

But generally, like, there is kind of

healthcare that is quote, unquote accessible.

But people will experience barriers.

For example, they don't know where it is.

Massive language and translation issues,

massive racism from receptionists and healthcare staff.

Like, the people in the past are generally like, pretty, like pretty lovely in the sense

of, like, they're very experienced with refugees.

Most of the guy, like the doctors, like a couple of them are from Iraq and they're just

like absolute sweethearts and can speak Arabic.

So that's super helpful.

But when you take people to the emergency

hospital, like, you really are dealing with this kind of like systemic racism.

But yeah, having like a French white doctor there, like our Dr. Noel, who's in the picture

here, bending over like she can really advocate to access health care for people.

So we're always thinking about who are we missing that is serious, you know, like

someone might present a wound and actually we can assess it and there's, you know, some

necrotic tissue and we know you need to get to hospital, whereas someone else can present a

wound and it's like, yeah, that's no problem, we can clean it, we can dress it.

Someone else will present a wound and it will be like, okay, you, we can change and dress

this for you now, but you need to come back tomorrow.

And we give them these wonderful guides that are put together by a group called Refugee

Infobus where they have all of the details about where to access, you know, doctors,

food, clothing distribution, water, things like this.

And it's got all the healthcare agencies there, so we can refer to them.

And we also have relationships with other medical groups.

So we can say to, for example, no boarders, medics that work in Dunkirk, we can say, hey,

we saw this guy, are you okay to do his dressings next week we're not going to be

here.

Yep, no problem.

Blah, blah, blah.

So yeah, it's a lot of kind of, there's like a whole ecology of relationships going on, which

is really important.

Yeah, and the other element is we support, we try and support volunteers from other groups.

So we'll give them kind of care packs sometimes we'll do like one to one

consultations that are a bit more comprehensive in the evenings with people that

are really struggling with burnout, for example.

Yeah, and it's just kind of another small contribution to the kind of solidarity effort

in the region.

So we have a team of four which I'll dive into more detail of those roles.

But you know, as you're listening to this, I'm sure you're passionate about herbalism.

But you know, the best thing about herbalism is this ability to enable kind of self care.

Right. And health autonomy.

So you know, if someone has toothache, you

know, there's only one dentist that sees people for like two hours, like on a Tuesday

morning.

And there's like a massive waiting list of

people to go.

But we can give people like clothes, which people are really familiar with, we can give

them a mouthwash, like that means they can do it themselves.

We can give people wound care kits to take away, you know, with hand cleaner,

disinfectant and dressings and things.

And it's like, yeah, like that's the nicest thing about herbal medicine is like, it's so

building of autonomy and like I mentioned we work in this kind of ecology of local

healthcare needs.

So the Red Cross Medicines du Monde Fast, which is the first aid support team, which are

kind of from the uk, and they generally are like nurses or paramedics and they.

Yeah. Drive around in a car and they're fantastic.

No borders medics.

Only started a couple of years ago, but

they're absolutely wonderful.

They maintain, like a permanent presence in

Dunkirk and again, like a team of doctors and nurses and things.

So we have a really nice relationship with them where, you know, they don't have enough

resources in the sense that maybe they can give someone like a little cup of cough syrup.

Whereas we can give them a whole bottle of cough syrup, an immune tonic, a chest rub, for

example.

So we'll often give them things that they can

give to people.

Yeah. And this picture here is like one of the old camps in Dunkirk, just to give you a bit

of an impression of the terrain.

Okay, so how.

I thought people might be interested in, like

how we organize the clinic.

And these roles have emerged over time.

Right.

So we have a clinical supervisor.

So this is someone who's got at least five years clinical experience.

They might be a very experience herbalist, like a medical herbalist who's been actively

seeing patients, who's done a lot of cpd.

Like in the uk, the herbal herbalism is like, a bit different to other countries that we

have, like, quite a lot of.

Well, not a lot.

We have a handful of like, clinical training programs that really are like, you know, like,

mine was nearly 4,000 hours.

There's like university degrees and stuff like that.

Like, you know, it's quite like, thorough, if that makes sense.

But yeah, and we also have doctors in this position.

And sometimes if you're lucky, you have doctors who are also herbalists, which is just

like the dream team.

But even though we have a supervisor, we try and organize horizontally.

So we will all talk to each other about things that people are presenting with.

You know, like, we'll learn a lot from each other.

Like, just because a doctor, you know, like Noel, for example, who comes that one of the

French doctors, she's so wonderful.

She'll always be like, oh, hey, Nicole, what

do you think about this?

And I'm like, hey, have you thought of this? And, you know, likewise, I'm learning so much

from her.

So it's like a really nice, like,

collaborative atmosphere.

But ultimately, that clinical supervisor does

carry a lot of the clinical responsibility.

You know, they have to have one eye on the other people at all times.

And what they're doing to ensure safe practice.

You know, they're doing things like keeping on top of research.

You know, we'll have a debrief every morning where we talk about, you know, team dynamics,

how we're all feeling, stuff like that.

But we'll also have like a clinical debrief

where it'll be like, hey, this, this, got you this.

There was this presentation and I wasn't sure of it and you said it was scabies, but I

wasn't sure.

And the supervisor will kind of, you know,

maybe bring up some images or share some papers or something to kind of educate the

group.

Yeah, and, yeah, and the field coordinator.

So this was my role, which I've happily handed

the baton over to other people to do now that I'm looking after my baby.

But this is like all the logistics, right.

So, you know, booking the travel, like

coordinating the medicine making with the medicine making coordinator, who I'll talk

about in a minute, who's amazing doing kind of all the inventory management, the timekeeping,

like communicating with agencies.

Like generally, I was also the driver, but it meant that I could.

Even though I wasn't an experienced medical herbalist, even though I was doing my training

all the time, I'm there to like make everything happen smoothly.

And that role is like so critical.

And then we have two herbal first aiders.

And again, one person can be more than one

role.

So the field coordinator is generally also a

herbal first aider.

So yeah, they defer to the clinical supervisor.

They'll kind of, you know, generally we have one person on first aid and two people on

internal because that's the busiest station.

But sometimes that changes.

And yeah, for example, I was trained by amazing herbalist called Dej Len Brandt, who's

a nurse and a paramedic and a herbalist and a Chinese TCM practitioner.

And she taught me all of this amazing wound care and dressing stuff.

So yeah, I'm super grateful for that experience and we try and pass that on.

So on the kind of herbal first aid station we are doing things like changing dressings and

bandaging people, splinting fingers, stuff like this.

And then we also have like a non medical role.

So we have a communications and support role

which again, like all of these roles are so important in their own things.

So this person is like supporting with translation.

And we've experimented with everything under the sun.

Like we've had team members who speak Arabic, for example.

And it's just been exhausting for them because they default into a translator role and they

don't actually get much, like, medical experience.

And we've tried having, like, additional translators on the team, but then the van only

takes four.

And then you can just guarantee if you've got

a Farsi translator, suddenly everyone will be speaking serani, which is like a type of

Kurdish or Pashto.

So then you're just kind of stuck.

So what we do now, what we learned from a

comrade who organizes in Paris, is we have WhatsApp, groups of people who speak different

languages, and we literally text them and say, hey, can someone do Sudanese Arabic right now?

And whoever's available, wherever they are in the world can reply and be like, yeah, I'm

free.

And then we literally phone, put them on

speakerphone, and then do like simultaneous translation in the moment.

This role is really important because what we want to do with every single person we see is

make sure they have an information leaflet.

They know where to get support.

You know, if we give someone a colds and flu pack, we want them to know, hey, if your cough

doesn't get better in a week, I want you to go to this hospital.

Here it is.

Or, you know, if it gets worse, blah, blah.

His other support.

Yeah. And this role can also, you know, just like, hoover up other things like cleaning

stock, taping, making the tea, stuff like that.

But yeah, they're really.

They're really like an important, important

role.

And also just kind of tracking who we've seen and.

Yeah.

What they need.

Okay. So, yeah, some of the kind of health needs and presenting conditions.

As you can imagine, people are living outside in like, super got challenging conditions.

Right.

It's a maritime environment, so it's cold,

it's windy, it's by the sea.

People are walking like kilometers a day.

Like, they'll walk from the camps to the port.

You know, sometimes they're walking like 30,

40, 50 kilometers a day.

Like, I remember doing like a foot bath for

someone who'd literally had his child on his shoulders and walked like 30km that day to

try.

Excuse me.

And try and cross.

And obviously people are dealing with chronic stress.

Like, they're not sleeping.

They're dealing with police violence.

They're dealing with violence, like, within the camp.

You know, maybe they owe someone money or, you know, like, there's so much stuff going on,

but it's just so relentless for people.

So, yeah, upper respiratory conditions are really.

Are kind of like bread and butter, like our forte there.

It's like there, I feel, are like where herbal medicine is, like, most amazing.

So especially in the winter season, we're seeing coughs Colds, flu.

And our goal is to help prevent these from getting worse and offering relief and helping

identify more serious infections and referring.

So when we have an experienced doctor on the team, like they will often listen to people's

chests, for example, and get people to hospital if they're concerned about them.

Yeah, wound care is kind of like relentless.

Like, people have a lot of like secondary

bacterial or anti or microbial infections in very basic wounds.

For example, they might have a blister that becomes quite infected or they might have

insect bites that become infected.

They might have musculoskeletal injuries, especially from police violence, from being

hit with batons, from spraining their ankle.

Sometimes you just sprain their ankle playing

football.

Like that's like a thing that happens a lot,

especially with the Eritrean community.

So it's like, yeah, often you're dealing with that skin issues, you know, again, chronic

stress.

People are having issues.

Especially things like scabies are like really challenging.

So we have like a fantastic anti itch spray, which I can talk about.

Foot complaints are really, really common blisters, fung infections, things like this.

And yeah, digestive issues.

You know, anyone experiencing stress or a different diet is going to have digestive

issues.

So we like to have some of the kind of tools

in the toolkit for that.

And yeah, and again, it's like everything under the sun.

Like, one week you'll be there and you know someone's been shot and you have to respond to

that.

The next week you'll be there and like,

literally you're just giving six men foot baths because no one's got any other like,

health needs to talk about.

So, you know, one of them sees someone getting a foot bath done and then they're like, oh,

hey, could I have one? And I'm like, yeah, let's rock and roll.

So we just set everyone up.

So, yeah, it's really, really varied.

Another day you could have 500 people waiting who all have a cough and a cold.

Another day, you know, we turned up one time and there'd been like a huge altercation with

the cops.

You know, there was like people with like head injuries, you know, that we had to get to

hospital.

There was like all sorts of injuries from this

incident and everyone was like hyper adrenalized, like, you know, and just, just

devoured our tea and water like really fast.

It's just like, yeah, every thing you can think of will kind of come up, if that makes

sense.

So, yeah, it's very, it's very kind of clinically varied.

If that makes sense.

Okay, so some of the herbal medicines used in the clinic.

So what I've done is I've just kind of exported the recipe file from my herbalism and

state violence book that shares the recipes for all of these medicines.

So you will know exactly what's in them and how to make them them.

So we have a wonderful cough syrup which is made from glycerin, which is an alternative to

alcohol because obviously a lot of the patients are Muslim.

So we have a glycerin which is infused with elder flour or elderberry or both, cinnamon,

fennel and yeah, combined with a kind of elecampane decoction and then like a

marshmallow gloop and it makes a really delicious, muclagenous, slightly expectorant,

like wonderful mix.

We have a fantastic chest rub with different infused oils and essential oils which is very

culturally familiar for people because they'll be like, oh, you have, you know, you have

Vicks or whatever.

So we'll be like, no, no, we have this and they smell it and you know, the wintergreens

like a really familiar smell.

So people will rub it on them.

And you know, everyone loves a bit of chest rub.

Immune tonic.

So this is generally a mix of glycerites.

We used to include like an antimicrobial vinegar but I think the vinegar is just, just

a bit too harsh on a lot of people's digestion.

But again, vinegar is a good alternative to alcohol tinctures.

So our immune tonics generally include things like ginger and thyme, marjoram, lemon balm.

Like we try and put a couple of nerve irons in it as well.

We have an amazing like mouthwash and gargle.

So this has kind of tinctures of, of like

myrrh and calendula and a little bit of kind of shop bought mouthwash or peppermint infused

water, things like that.

Like we'll have to check that people are okay with alcohol but generally because you're

spitting it out, most people are happy to.

We have bruise ointments which is like a fantastic mix of like St. John's Wort Oil,

comfy oil and arnica.

We also use daisy which are kind of more

sustainably harvest.

Here in the UK we have like an anti itch spray which is like, yeah, it doesn't treat scabies

but it helps relieve that like persistent constant itching.

So that's kind of a mix of vinegars.

I think it's like nettle and chickweed and

plantain and that's really, really popular.

Because, like, the difference between having

no relief and not being able to sleep is so different to, like, actually being able to

stop itching and for those bites to kind of recover.

But obviously, if people have scabies, like, we'll refer them to other treatments.

So sometimes there's like a camper van that comes with a shower unit and that will enable

people to have showers.

In California, people can go to La Paz, the free clinic, and have a shower there, like, if

they've been referred with scabies treatment, and they'll have, like, the lotion and the

kind of internal medication.

So, yeah, we're trying constantly to, like, not just, like, to solve people's challenges,

if that makes sense.

Indigestion lozenges.

So these are really delicious mixes of herbal

powders and glycerin and rose water.

So things like marshmallow, a little bit of

licorice and meadow sweet.

And they're really fantastic kind of soothing

fat, acid reflux.

We have different creams which are super popular, like, amazing calendula cream.

Anti itch cream, which is like a chickweed.

A really strong antifungal cream, which is

like a mixture of tinctures and essential oils and cream.

That's really fantastic.

If someone has, like, a fungal infection in

their foot.

And we do.

Yeah.

Louise makes.

I'll talk about Louise in a minute.

A really wonderful chamomile cream.

We have an extra strong cough mix just in case people have, like, a more persistent chest

infection.

You know, often, like I said, we'll refer someone for antibiotics or whatever, but

sometimes the people are just kind of in that middle ground, an allergy blend.

So a lot of people have kind of allergic reactions.

We've decided not to give out antihistamines just because it's not our scope of practice

and people are able to buy them if needed.

But the allergy blend contains, like, glycerites and vinegars, so it's like nettle

and plantain and stuff.

Chamomile.

Aloe vera gel.

We combine aloe vera gel with a little bit of Baikal skullcap powder, which is a really

strong antimicrobial.

We use that in our wound care.

If a wound is like, if there's a sort of secondary infection and it's like very dry,

we'll use that.

If it's very damp, we might just use the powder.

We also use aloe vera gel with copious amounts of lavender essential oil in case of burns.

Yeah. And then we have other kind of herbal powders like myrrh.

Sometimes we're using wounds, we don't like, like it generally because it's quite dark and

someone might.

The next person who's changing a dressing

might not know what it is.

Marshmallow powder is really fantastic, especially if there's eye inflammation.

We'll put some marshmallow powder in like a tea bag packet and put that on warm and put

that on someone's eye and that will bring out a lot of pus and like, really help shift

people's eye infections.

It's a real, it's a real crowd pleaser.

Everyone's like, what the hell are you doing?

And then they always come back like, wow, my eyes better.

Okay. So obviously we use so much medicine and if we had endless amounts of money, we could

do the clinic every single day of the week and.

But it's just not possible even just to run one week a month.

It's like two and a half thousand pounds, basically on the amount of medicine it costs,

you know, to, to, to use and to take there.

You know, things like packaging is really

expensive.

But yeah, we have this wonderful human called Louise Wall, who is a herbalist who lives on

an organic farm.

And yeah, she is incredible.

She's.

They've allowed kind of a large area to be

used to grow herbs.

So volunteers come I think now twice a month to help with the growing.

So there's like really amazing.

You can see here, this is like a large row of

calendula.

There's all different beds that people cultivate.

And then she's got a kind of lab based building in a barn where people help make

medicine every month.

So Louise kind of like takes the weight of

coordinating what's needed for the clinic and then other herbalists will contribute things.

So before I had Lee, I was kind of.

Yeah, I was often making like 500 cough syrups

a month or something for the project or other bits and bobs or things like the lozenges,

stuff like that.

Unfortunately, now the pressure really is on Louise.

But yeah, other herbalists do contribute things.

We also welcome contributions of, you know, tinctures and stuff like that.

I mean, money is like really the most useful thing.

But yeah, it's a big logistical game making all of these things.

It's been a long process over several years of confirming our recipes, you know, trying to

kind of standardize them.

Because the difficulty in different people contributing medicine is that the quality can

be different.

Right.

So, yeah, that's a challenge is trying to constantly create high quality medicine that

will be effective in the field.

Okay, so just briefly, before I Talk about Ukraine.

I just wanted to talk about like other examples of herbal solidarity in terms of like

the border regime.

So one of the groups was called crop.

So yeah, when we meet people in Cali and stuff, like, we.

We don't give out like our personal numbers, but we will give out like the mobile herbal

clinic number, like if we need to coordinate taking someone to the doctor or something like

that.

And we had a text through from a group who'd self organized called crop, and they in a kind

of detainment center called in a like little Welsh village called Penali.

And it's closed down now thanks to their agitation.

But people were being housed there at the start of the pandemic.

They're still unfortunately being held in another place called Napier Barracks, but this

was like a kind of barracks in South Wales.

And they just literally text us and we're like, hey, like, people are getting Covid

left, right and center, like, could you get some medicine to us?

So I just like, yeah, we made like, I think 100 packs of like cough syrup, immune tonic,

and you know, also some really beautiful infused lavender oil.

And, you know, got the labels translated, made a translated information leaflet.

I literally just drove up to South Wales, organized with them, you know, got approval to

bring it in and stuff.

And yeah, that was like a really nice example of like inside, outside organizing.

We've also had that with people that have gone, been put in kind of hotels by the state

who've, you know, requested care packages of things like lavender oil.

I'd love to develop like a bigger project like that.

And I know some folks are kind of working in that direction.

Like, I think Calais takes so much energy, finances, resources to make that happen.

But I would love to see like, herbalists supporting people like refugees and asylum

seekers in accommodation, like left, right and center.

Okay. Another example is a comrade from Paris came out with us to see what we do, and we

gave them some medicine to take back.

Unfortunately, I need to follow up with them

again.

But in Paris, there's a lot of refugees that are living homeless because the French state

refuses to house them.

And these are people who are having to wait

two, three years sometimes for asylum applications to be approved.

They're people that are applying to actually stay in Paris, but they often have a lot of

police violence.

It's really horrifying.

And they also have conditions like scabies.

So this friend who came was like, took a lot

of our anti itch spraying creams and were, you know, doing dressings for people.

And that was really helping People get to sleep and just supporting them.

While they were trying to advocate for other health care.

There's a few other projects in my herbalism and state violence book.

One Herbalista, really incredible community herbalism project.

Different projects all over Atlanta and also in Ireland.

And they've done little care stations at events for people in direct provision, which

is like the kind of state organized accommodation in Ireland.

There's also a group called Bristol Herbalists about borders near me who have been going a

long time now who make medicine consistently and distribute it to kind of refugee projects

around the city.

So this includes people who like mothers and babies and families and yeah, some other kind

of welcome, excuse me, projects.

So yeah, so that's a nice example of like the

borders are everywhere.

Right.

You don't have to go to France.

Like people are everywhere.

And that's yeah, a really nice example.

They also have a big community allotment

garden where they grow medicine and things.

And finally, I haven't asked her if it was okay to include her in this talk, but a really

lovely herbalist called Dana Woodruff who has a project called Remedios Infronteras which is

like distributing medicines at the US Mexico border.

I don't know the current status of it, but yeah, I've been meaning to touch base and like

I said, said at the beginning it'd be wonderful to hear of people organizing stuff

in Mexico or other border hotspots.

But yeah, just another little example of things that can happen.

Okay, I'm gonna move on to Ukraine now.

Invade Ukraine in a really intense kind of genocidal inv.

Kind of.

This is in the context of 350 years of

colonialism.

Yeah, I don't have the time to talk about the politics of Ukraine, but really does my head

in when kind of leftist, leftist types just don't know anything about Ukraine.

Never met Ukrainian believe all the Russian propaganda.

Think just because NATO support Ukraine that somehow Ukrainian people aren't suffering.

Yeah, it just, it really drives me nuts.

I'm very fortunate to have Ukrainian friends

and at the time my ex partner was a Russian refugee.

So yeah, I've kind of been in that like Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish like

side of the world for a long time in the terms of like political context and stuff.

So everyone before the invasion like formally began, everyone was talking about like what's

going to happen.

Like people were already starting to do

training and stuff for people's self defense units, things like that.

But, yeah, when it started, I spoke to Ukrainian comrades, visited Warsaw, drove

around with some amazing humans there to visit different sites to kind of see what the needs

were.

Right.

Like, we didn't want to dive in without seeing

what was needed.

And yeah, there was this kind of.

Yeah, it was clear that there wasn't a need

for, like, a strong medical presence, like actual clinics.

Like, other kind of NGO types were, like, all over that stuff.

But people were really dealing with, like, acute shock and stress.

So, yeah, I put a global call out for support.

Loads of people got in touch.

Loads of people donated money, which was amazing.

It's completely dried up now, which is upsetting and frustrating.

But, yeah, we.

I'll talk about the site where we found in a

minute, but basically we found a site where we could meet refugees.

So, yeah, I'll talk about.

I'll talk about that now.

So, yeah, basically there was a really lovely little site at a petrol station, self

organized by people, like, not the Polish state, just local people, organized,

organized.

A site where there was like a medicines tent, there was like SIM cards, there was like a

children's tent, there was like a food and drink tent.

And it's outside the city of Lublin and basically all the different border crossings.

People on coaches leaving Ukraine would, like, go via this petrol station.

So it was like the perfect place.

Like, a coach would pull up, 40 people would

get off.

They'd have five, 10 minutes to, like, get

food.

Okay, maybe a bit longer, maybe half an hour, get food, get everything they need, and then

they'd be on their way to whichever city in Europe, whether it was Warsaw or Berlin or

even sometimes up to, like, Finland, for example.

And it meant that we could be in one little spot and meet hundreds and hundreds of people

a day.

And, yeah, I will just.

I will just never forget it for the rest of my

life.

Like, people were coming off the buses

literally with, like, no possessions.

Some people had literally just escaped, like,

burning buildings like the day before.

Some people had been living in bunkers for several days.

Some people had.

Well, most of the women had left their

husbands and partners behind, had family members killed already because of, you know,

where they were being evacuated from.

There was lots of people who were disabled being evacuated.

There were so many children.

And it just.

Yeah, it will never leave me seeing the delight on these children's faces of just

finding a new teddy in this children's tent.

But, yeah, people were just in really serious, acute stress and shock and.

And suddenly being somewhere safe where they could offload.

And, yeah, just.

I was there with a translator.

Some people spoke English, but I was there with a Belarusian friend who's translating.

And, you know, there were lots of stories of, you know, people seeing, like, family members

be raped and killed, people's having their apartment buildings be bombed.

Like, you know, it just.

Yeah, it's just absolutely horrifying.

So, yeah, so anyway, we distributed the first.

I was there for the first week and helped

distribute over three and a half thousand medicines.

And then a Ukrainian herbalist arrived who kind of took over, and we distributed over 17,

000 medicines over six months at this site.

And then unfortunately, the kind of local people, like, decided to close the site

because less people were arriving and in such kind of huge numbers, if that makes sense.

Even though there's, like, massive internal displacement in Ukraine and people, you know,

but a lot of their, like, solidarity infrastructure got quite institutional,

whereas at the beginning it was always that kind of, like, informal mutual aid stuff going

on.

But, yeah, so the medicines were designed with Ukrainian comrades, with herbs that are used

in kind of Ukraine's, like, really rich herbal medicine traditions.

So it's not like someone in the UK who's gonna be like, like, people love herbal medicine.

People have a deep, rich relationship with the land.

You know, like, valerian sold out three days within the start of the invasion.

So, like, people were coming up to the stand and, like, bursting into tears from having

valerian again.

You know, we had skullcap tinctures.

We had hawthorne and rose.

Like, this woman told me this beautiful story of how her ro.

How her and her husband would make rose tincture every year and just, you know,

started crying because she'd been separated from him.

And, like.

Yeah, it was just all the nervous system

support stuff.

We also had glycerites, like chamomile and

lemon balm.

Hawthorne and rose, because a lot of people

were pregnant as well, right.

So we couldn't always give them tinctures.

We had a tea blend with lime flour, which is really common in Ukraine.

Chamomile and lemon balm.

We also have had a nutritive tea blend.

So this was like nettle, dandelion leaf, oat

straw and raspberry leaf, which is really popular.

Some people only like external medicine, or they just, you know, they loved all of it.

But, yeah, we made lavender oil and muscle rub.

You know, some people were just on coaches for, like, days at a time, so had a lot of,

like, muscular skeletal issues.

So they loved that.

That cough syrup, you know.

Again, this was.

Obviously, the pandemic's still happening, but

this was like acute covert times.

Yeah.

And the immune tonic just to kind of support people during this period of like relentless

stress.

So yeah, Ukraine Herbal Solidarity kind of stopped working in the sense that once, once

this site closed, it became very difficult to distribute.

Like Lana, who was the person involved, moved to Warsaw and tried to distribute there.

And that was like qu.

Challenging.

And she had her own stuff going on.

And my best friend killed himself in prison.

So I just kind of lost the ball.

And like, I've written a long article about

this in the Herbalism and State Violence book, but it was like very unsustainable to

constantly becoming.

Like, I drove to Poland twice from the UK and it just wasn't sustainable, like financially

or practically.

So. Yeah, but it was really a fantastic response in that kind of instance.

And then an amazing human called Oscar has been distributing what was left in our

warehouse.

Like we just kind of squatted someone else's warehouse with our remaining tinctures.

So I'll just read what they wrote.

So this October, Solidarity Apothecary

supported Elliot and a few volunteers from Kalinya.

Sorry to check the pronunciation of that collective is a Ukrainian project in Preparing

and transporting 3,000 bottles of tinctures and teas for Nervous System Support to

Ukraine.

From there, Insight Humanitarian Hub has been distributing them to queer defenders and

disabled elders living and working in the front lines.

Yeah, so like there's more details there, but basically we're kind of out of pocket.

I paid like £500 for the van hire deposit and it, yeah, the van got damaged so lost that,

which was like pretty ouchy.

And also Elliot's paid for a ton of stuff out

of pocket.

And then I launched, launched a merchandise fundraiser this month and it just completely

flopped.

So we're gonna have to start again.

But if you can put any money into these projects, we'd appreciate it so, so much.

Okay, so just some closing words about like, if you're thinking of doing something similar.

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff about this in the Herbalism State Violence book, but

there is a big difference between short term response versus like long term infrastructure.

Right.

Like something like the clinic in Calais is unfortunately going to be there for a really

long time.

So it needs to be incredibly sustainable and consistent, whereas this kind of obviously

loads of projects in Ukraine will be as well.

Like, you know, the invasion is still raging

on that.

You know, there's kind of a huge aftermath if it ever ends.

But I just mean like we had a kind of short term response to that, like massive like

influx of refugees at the border.

Whereas other things are kind of more longer term.

Term.

I just want to say that medical responsibility

is not always easiest in grassroots project.

So like our clinic in.

Well it wasn't a clinic.

Right.

Our herbal space tent in Poland like wasn't a

clinic.

We weren't triaging people or asking them

health questions.

It was literally like just you know, gifting

people kind of care packages of nervous system support, you know, talking to them about what

they need and just listening to people.

But yeah, any of these projects obviously need structure, care, intention and commitment.

Commitment.

So yeah, I've written an article about this, so I'm not going to talk about these in any

depth now.

But it, the article talks about the importance

of like surveying needs, different health needs, like this relationship ecology, like

what are your relationships with like with different kind of groups on the ground.

Anti racism and white saviorism is really important to talk about, like cultural

learning, like kind of, you know, what people will take and not take and things around

gender, like all sorts of stuff, like knowing your scope of practice, how do you skill share

in your group group, how do you grow sustainably, like legal structures, division

of labor, logistics, vicarious trauma, translation, social media risks.

There is just like so much to think about, but do not let that stop you because this work is

like super important.

And I always say that like I am accountable to those refugees and I've spoken to like

hundreds, slash thousands of people and they are all just so, so grateful that the clinic

in Calais for example, exists and so lovely and supportive and encouraging and if you ever

doubt that something is not needed, like just talk to people and you will get that feedback

that it's really important and you know, keep going.

Yeah, and we're always happy to support people as well.

Okay, so just to like wrap up on a kind of closing note about like abolition.

So yeah, I'm just going to have a sip of water.

Okay, so this is from Gracie and Luke.

Again, abolition is concerned with presence,

the presence of life sustaining goods, services and practices of care, as well as

absence of violent state practices like detention and deportation.

Accordingly, border abolition seeks to dismantle violent borders, but also to

cultivate new ways of caring for one another.

Nurturing forms of collectivity more conducive

to human flourishing than the nation states we currently inhabit.

Border abolition is a revolutionary politics situated within wider struggles for economic

justice, racial equality and sustainable ecologies based on the conviction that there

will be no livable futures in which borders between political communities are violently

guarded.

And yeah, I would definitely check out their Book about border abolition.

And I just wanted.

This was like something I wrote in the

Herbalism State violence book, but I'll just read it out.

Struggles against the border regime include resistance and fights against new

developments, such as the British state wanting to deport people to Rwanda.

Oh, excuse me.

It also includes mutual aid and survival based

solidarity, such as distributing food and things people need, operating search and

rescue missions on dangerous, organizing healthcare and many other examples.

It also means organizing as a collective struggle, working with and being led by people

on the move who resist repression, organize demonstrations and fight back.

We can keep taking action to resist dehumanization and advocate for free movement

of people.

All right, so, yeah, I know I haven't talked about abolition much, but I just want to say

that, like, the.

These clinics are really important and herbal

medicine is like a beautiful offering and a response to the challenges people are

experiencing.

But ultimately we need to be getting to the kind of root causes of this violence.

Right.

Like, of the state of borders, you know,

challenging things like these, like, dehumanizing conditions and, you know, safe

passages to apply for asylum and stopping detention centers and, you know, all the other

things.

And I, I think herbalists can be, you know, and should be part of that equation and part

of that, like, ecology of resistance.

Okay, so some resources.

So, yeah, I've put in the Calais website, the

Herbalism and state violent book, State violence book, which talks about all this in

more detail.

And there's also a link to the resources from

the book which contains much more resources.

One last picture from conversations from Calais.

This one just, like, breaks my heart.

You were walking back to your tent, holding my

hand.

We were laughing because you kept slipping in

the mud.

Suddenly we heard an ambulance siren in the

distance.

You let go of my hand, ran behind a tree and screamed.

It was the police.

You were four years old.

Yeah, just again, like a picture of the horror.

Like, please check out their Instagram for kind of more of these conversations.

From Calais.

Yeah, to just.

Anyway, yeah, a couple of podcasts, an

interview with another coordinator in the project, Victor, on my frontline herbalism

podcast.

The Cal border broadcast is really nice.

It's led by asylum seekers, um, with different interviews, different languages.

They read the welcome guides out in different languages still.

We rise podcast is again led by, um, migrants and asylum seekers about kind of more like a

Ukraine day, like, experience.

Final straw Radio, it's like an anarchist radio, like, weekly show that has different

interviews and they have like a bunch of different podcasts over the years of

interviews with people organizing against the border Regime and the system on the US Mexico

border.

Some books I mentioned, the UK border Regime book, which is free to download if you look on

the Corporal Watch website.

A couple of other books there that I've quoted

throughout this talk.

Yeah, okay.

And yeah, these are some other groups working

in Calais and Dunkirk.

So if you're interested in volunteering there,

there's always loads of people that would really welcome your support.

So we have a warehouse with mobile refugee support, for example, in Dunkirk, who just are

amazing.

I cannot say how great they are at giving

people like consistently what they're asking for.

You know, clothes, shoes, food, things like that.

Other first aid groups, other medical groups, refugee community kitchen.

If you can go there and wash up for week, they will love you.

They just feed people every single day as well as Cal Food Collective that give kind of packs

of food that people can cook for themselves.

So yeah, and then just like a few.

Sorry, this section was a bit rushed, but

there's like a few campaigns and solidarity projects from different parts of Europe.

Some kind of health related campaigns here and the conversations from Calais that I've

mentioned.

All right, I think that's it.

Feel free to email me questions to info

solidarity.

Apothecary.org I'm so sorry that I didn't get

of do this live and talk with people.

It's like always the best part of doing workshops is that kind of like participatory

stuff.

Yeah.

Thank you for your patience with me.

I better return to my baby now.

But yeah, I hope this has been interesting and yeah, please, please take care.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

show@solidarityapothecary.org

podcast.