- All right, so now I'm gonna talk about the mobile Herbal Clinic Calais. So yeah, it is a collective grassroots project started in 2019, so lots of, well, not lots, but a number of different herbalist 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, and 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 systems, 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 went out in September, 2019 as the kind of like first time as a standalone clinic. And I actually joined in October, 2019. 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. But yes, since October, 2019, we've like aspired to go out every month. 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, it's some, it's somehow almost easier to recruit someone that's gonna 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 as you know, what happened in 2020. 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 we're one of the only medical groups still operating. We kind of took the risk as more 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 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 supported more than 10,000 people since October, 2019 and yeah, we, I think I've got a slide somewhere. Okay. No, so we used to be called herbalist sub borders, but there was some kind of like bureaucratic dynamics with the American organisation who have their own like nonprofit 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 stations. So we've got draws of all different medicines for all different complaints. I'm gonna talk about health conditions in a minute. We have a tea urn, which is really popular. We've kind of hot lemon and ginger for example. 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 at, at a kind of on the outskirts of what are 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 'cause 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 'cause 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 are not, we don't have the resources to do like a comprehensive consultation for an hour and analyse 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 practise. 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 are 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 'em 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? Cough's called flu. And we have like a whole kind of algorithm of different questions we'll ask people. And what we are 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 lepas, 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 dunno where it is massive language and translation issues, massive racism from receptionists and healthcare staff. Like the people in the PAs 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 are like, a couple of them are from Iraq and they're just like absolute sweethearts 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 healthcare 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'll be like, okay you, we can change and dresses 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 Info Bus 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 Borders medics that work in dunk park. We can say, hey we saw this guy, are you okay to do his dressings next week? 'cause we're not gonna 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 are 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 demand Fast, which is the first stage support team which are kind of from the UK and they generally are like nurses or paramedics and they yeah have drive around in a car and they're fantastic. No borders medics only started a couple of years ago, but they're 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 organise 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 experienced 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 programmes 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 herbalist, which is just like the dream team. But even though we have a supervisor, we try and organise 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 Noelle for example, who comes one of the French doctors, she's so wonderful, she'll always be like, oh hey Nicole, what do you think about this da da. 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 practise, 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 know 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 button 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 'cause that's the busiest station. But sometimes that changes and yeah, for example, I was trained by amazing herbalist called De brt who, who's a nurse and a paramedic and a herbalist and a Chinese TCM practitioner. And she taught me all of this amazing like wound care and dressing stuff. So yeah, I'm like super grateful for that experience and we try and pass that on. So on that, on that kind of herbal first aid station, we are doing things like, yeah changing dressings and banding, 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 to Ronnie, which is like a type of Kurdish or pato. So then you're just kind of stuck. So what we do now, what we learned from a comrade who organises 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 wanna do with every single person we see is make sure they have an information leaf that 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 blah, here's 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 kinda like 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 challenging conditions, right? It's a maritime environment. So it's cold, it's windy, it's by the sea, people are walking like kilometres a day. Like they'll walk from the camps to the port, you know, sometimes they're walking like 30, 40, 50 kilometres a day. Like I remember doing like a foot bath for someone who'd literally had his child on his shoulders and walked like 30 kilometres 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 a experienced doctor on the team, like they'll often listen to people's chest 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 erit terrainian 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, fungal infections, things like this. And yeah, digestive issues, you know, anyone experiencing stress or a different diet is gonna 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 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. 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 ella campaign decoction and then like a marshmallow gl and it makes a really delicious nuclear genis, 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 VIX or whatever. So we'll be like no, no we have this and they smell it and you know, the winter green's 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 glycerides. We used to include like an antimicrobial vinegar, but I think the vinegar is just a bit too harsh on a lot of people's digestion. But again, vinegar's a good alternative to alcohol tinctures. So our immune tonics generally include things like ginger and thyme, marram, lemon balm, like we try and put a couple of vines in it as well. We have an amazing like mouthwash and goggles. So this has kind of tinctures of of like meh 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 'cause you're spitting it out, most people are happy to. We have breeze ointments, which is like a fantastic mix of like St. John's wall oil, comfort 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 Cali. People can go to LaPaz, 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 meadowsweet and they're really fantastic kind of soothing for 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 came oil cream. We have an extra strong cough mix just in case people have like a more persistent chest infection and you know, often, like I said, we'll refer someone for antibiotics or whatever, but sometimes the people were 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 practise and people are able to buy them if needed. But the allergy blend contains like glycerides and vinegars, so it's like nettle and plantain and stuff. Kaile aloe vera gel. We combine aloe vera gel with a little bit of bcal 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 meh, sometimes we're using wounds, we don't like it generally 'cause 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 teabag packet and put that on warm and put that on someone's eye and that will bring out a lot of puss 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 eye's 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's expensive. But yeah, we have this wonderful human called Louise Wall who is a herbalist who lives on an organic farm and yeah, she's 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 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 standardise them. 'cause 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 were in a kind of detainment centre called in a like little Welsh village called Pene 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 centre, like could you get some medicine to us? So I just like, yeah we made like, I think a hundred packs of like cough syrup, onic, 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, organised 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 organising. 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 Klay takes so much energy, finances, resources to make that happen. But I would love to see like herbalist supporting people like refugees and asylum seekers in accommodation, like left, right and centre. 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 of 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 healthcare. There's a few other projects in my herbalism and state violence book, one Herley star, really incredible community herbalism project, different projects all over Atlanta and also in island. And they've done little care stations events for people in direct provision, which is like the kind of state organised 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 Remedy in Front Terrace, which is like distributing medicines at the US Mexico border. I don't know the current status of it, but yeah, I'm been meaning to touch base and like I said at the beginning, it would be wonderful to hear of people organising 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. Okay. So yeah, so as people know in February, 2022 the Russian state decided to kind of reinve Ukraine in a really intense kind of genocidal invasion, 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 gonna happen. Like people were already starting to do training and stuff for people, 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 wanna 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 organised 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 'cause 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 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. Peoples having their apartment buildings be bombed like, you know, it just, yeah, it 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 in 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 institutionalised 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, me, me, me, me, me. 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 'cause she'd been separated from him and like yeah it was just all the nervous system support stuff. We also had glycerides like Cha Ma and Lemon Balm, Hawthorne and Rose. 'cause a lot of people were pregnant as well, right? So we couldn't always give them tinctures. We had a tea blend, we have lime flour, which is really common in Ukraine, Kamaal and Lemon Bal. 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 musculoskeletal issues. So they loved that cough syrup, you know, again, this was obviously the pandemic's still happening but this was like acute covid times. Yeah. And the immune to 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 quite 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 re support Elliot and a few volunteers from Calen, oh sorry, tag the pronunciation of that collective is a Ukrainian project in preparing and transporting 3000 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 pounds for the van hire deposit and it, yeah the van got damaged so lost that which was like pretty ouchie and also Elliot's paid for a tonne of stuff out of pocket. And then I 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 are 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 Cali is unfortunately gonna 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 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. I just wanna say that medical responsibility is not always easiest in grassroots projects. 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'd need and just listening to people. But yeah, any of these projects obviously need structure, care, intention and commitment. So yeah, I've written an article about this so I'm not gonna 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 look like with different kind of groups on the ground, anti-racism and white saviorism. It's 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 practise, how do you skill share in your group? How do you grow sustainably like legal structures, division of labour, logistics, vicarious trauma, translation, social media risks. There is just like so much to think about but do not let that stop you 'cause 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 grateful that the clinic in Cali 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 gonna 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 practises of care as well as absence of violent state practises 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, 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 seas, organising healthcare and many other examples. It also means organising as a collective struggle, working with and being led by people on the move who resist repression, organise demonstrations, and fight back. We can keep taking action to resist dehumanisation and advocate for free movement of people. All right, so yeah, I know I haven't talked about abolition much, but I just wanna say that like 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 dehumanising conditions and you know, safe passages to apply for asylum and stopping detention centres and you know, all the other things. And I think herbalist 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 the Cali website, the herbalism 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 con Conversations from Cali. 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 that Instagram for kind of more of these conversations from Kle. Yeah, just anyway, yeah, a couple of podcasts, an interview with another coordinator in the project Victor on my frontline hubs and podcast. The Kle border broadcast is really nice. It's led by asylum seekers with different interviews, different languages. They read the welcome guides out in different languages still We Rise podcast is again led by migrants and asylum seekers about kind of more like a UK 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 organising against the border regime and the system on the US Mexico border. Some books. So I mentioned the UK Border Regime book, which is free to download if you look on the Al 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 Ali and Dun Cook. 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 Dun Cook who just are bucking 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 a week, they will love you. They're just feed people every single day as well as Cali 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 Kale that I've mentioned. Alright, I think that's it. Feel free to email me questions to info@solidarityapottery.org. I'm so sorry that I didn't get to kind 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.