This is the story of a Pharmacist, a Herbalist and the little African boy - with a Yorkshire accent.

I was born Yorkshire and lived there for some time because I thought it best to be near my mum for a bit. Unbeknownst to me and my self centered little world, Les, besides being my wonderfully nurturing mother, was also a qualified pharmacist. And so from my very first day on earth, in addition to providing clean nappies and a perfectly pukable amount of food in my stomach, I unwittingly had this little protective ‘apothecarian’ bubble around me too.

And of course, there was also the ubiquitous swaddlings of the UK health system with ready and waiting A&Es for young soon to be domestic hell raisers like I was destined to be.

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In retrospect it was probably all a little over padded - for a middle child of average ambitions, growing up in a humble, well "health and safetied" Northern UK town with nothing more scary than grey sheep, grumpy lollipop ladies, misfired conkers and the occasional troll under the bridge....I even had my own motorbike helmet I had found that I would scamper around in. I was well protected.

But as it happened Dad had quite different plans for our little family. He was destined to not follow his Northerly forefathers ‘down t’pit’ (or whatever we are allowed to say the modern equivalent is without upsetting any overly woke miners). And so from the age of seven I found myself transported to, and sitting on the far off shores of Amanzi Mtoti (as Shaka Zulu would have first uttered) and I spent the remaining years of my inquisitive adolescence on the wild bush-shrouded South Coast of Natal in South Africa.  

EVERYTHING CHANGED

...as you might well have imagined, and this in turn produced an interesting dichotomy:

On the one hand, I had a mother - protective, trained, ready and willing to dispense meds and deal with all kinds of UK style knocks and scrapes, who had considerable faith in first world medicine, doctors, prescriptions and the general principle that if you had so much as brain freeze after swallowing your 99 whole - then someone in a white coat should probably be informed immediately.

And on the other she was quite happy to let me and my pale northern accented siblings, run around deepest Africa, practically feral. And to be clear, we now lived in a world where nature wasn't something you watched Attenborough huskily whisper about on telly anymore….it was right outside the front door, sharp, hungry and often very eager: Baboons and Monkeys, big snakes, small snakes, the occasional Leopard, scary Leguaans (monitor lizards), blue headed lizards, jackals, scorpions, the horrifying "Man 'o War" jelly fish (blue bottles), mosquitos the size of drones, sharks surfing the waves, itinerant hippos and even the dreaded bilharzia in the rivers, to mention a few.

But barefoot and shirtless, I lived life as only a 7yr old could.

I climbed the trees...I fell out of the trees, flipped my go-cart, broke my arm, got bitten by things, chased by dogs, always seemed to use my face to break my fall and had permanent skateboard roasties on my knees, wheelied anything that could wheelie, I fished the great green winding river, got hooked by jiggers, caught eels, fell in the great green river, chased snakes, got chased by snakes, shot things with pellet guns, got chased by a man with a real gun, held my breath under water the longest , we even swam in the warm well sharked Benguela current, whacked hornets nests, caught Mongeese, caught bats, shot rats, ate anything growing on trees, smoked anything that could smoke….and generally treated the natural world as one enormous computer game, with me in it - and with absolutely no regard for health and safety. If something moved we investigated. If it didn't move, we shot it with a catapult. If it had wheels it was meant to go fast, if it was glass it should break, if it could burn, it did. God, I was even driving cars, ramping motorbikes and firing every kind of firearm you could imagine, before my 11th birthday. It was definitely not the UK.

It was all....glorious.

Irreverent, wild and in many cases illegal I bet.

And yet,

somewhere in the background, there always, was Mum, ready with a crepe bandage or new sample from the chemist and her educated parental prompting:

“Take this tablet.”

“That's infected.”

"What bit you?"

"No not dead, he's just a bit concussed, bike is buggered tho'"

“Drink this, its good for you”

“I told you that would give you tummy ache”

"Ooo thats a lot of blood"

“Nope that’s broken”

“Use this cream, it's new”

“Where have you been this time”

“That’ll need stitches”

“Swallow this pill, better make it two"

“We’re going to the doctor!”

My childhood therefore involved an mild contradiction between “Go and play outside, have fun and learn” and "John, bring me the surgical stapler!”

Looking back, I suppose it was a perfect marriage and I absorbed both philosophies without really thinking about either of them.

And then it all stopped ….and suddenly I was all grown up and living a very civilised life in a big city and working in Advertising.

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Around this time I met my wonderful partner also in Advertising. Now she too had had a similar upbringing elsewhere on the continent with bugs and snakes and the sharp African stuff, but now as a big person she had, well....been a really clever big person and done something quite special besides her job....

She had taken herself off and studied the rather enormous world of complementary and alternative approaches to health and wellbeing.

Impressive….I wont say it's what snagged me, but it was impressive.

And this was when things got little interesting for me.

Suddenly, whenever I said something like:

“I've got a headache.”

The response wasn't always: “Here's a pain-killer dear.”

But was: “Why?”

“Because I've got a headache.”

“No, I mean why have you got a headache?”

This was deeply irritating.

I wanted a fix, not a Colombo investigation.

It continued: Was I dehydrated? Had I eaten? Had I slept properly? Was I stressed? Had I been staring at a computer for 12 hours? (I was a film editor btw) Was there something else going on?

There was always a question.

And, annoyingly, quite often, there was an answer.

Even something as apparently ridiculous as trying Rescue Remedy to just chill, before reaching for the medicine cabinet introduced a different way of thinking.

Not “Which pill fixes this?”

But “What is actually going on here?”

Now, before anyone asks me so why haven't we abandoned modern medicine and moved into a yurt with a collection of crystals and a cat named Merlin, let me be clear.

We still believe in doctors.

We still believe in hospitals.

We still believe that if you fall off a roof, get run over by a bus or start leaking bodily fluids from somewhere they shouldn't be leaking, A&E is probably a splendid way to spend the afternoon.

The difference is that I've become rather more inclined to pause before running to the ER just because its the accepted thing to do. Just look at what happened during Covid - A&Es were dead (pun intended). I know because we were there with a dislocated shoulder and a lot of screaming. For which no amount of all natural Arnica wonder rub and Sangoma blessed bat soup was going to quell the particular combination of expletives on offer. So I ask the question - just how bad are many of the afflictions that have traditionally packed out A&Es prior to Covid and how much could and should be dealt with at home?

And so that pause has become quite important.

Modern medicine is extraordinary. We know it saves lives every day. Antibiotics, surgery, emergency medicine, vaccines and a thousand other developments have transformed human existence.

But somewhere between “Ag, don't worry about it” and “Fuck, call an ambulance”, there is quite a lot of territory.

And that is the territory we've become interested in.

It's the territory of looking after yourself. Be it for medical reasons or just daily healthy existence.

Of understanding your body.

...of asking whether something might be helped by changing what you're doing, rather than immediately trying to suppress what you're feeling.

Of looking at plants, herbs, essential oils, traditional remedies and other approaches that humans have been experimenting with for thousands of years.

And, importantly, of questioning things.

That's probably the biggest change.

I used to think of health rather like a car.

Something goes wrong. Take it to the garage. Replace the faulty bit.

Carry on.

Now I'm more inclined to think of myself as a slightly temperamental garden.

You can't just wander in, notice that one plant looks unhappy and shout:

“QUICK! MORE CHEMICALS!”

Sometimes you need to look at the soil. The water. The light. The weather. What you've planted. What you've been doing to the poor bloody thing.

And perhaps whether you've been watering it with too much GIN!

This way of thinking has become the cornerstone of how we think at KKOL.

KKOL grew out of this fascination with natural ingredients, traditional processes and the simple idea that perhaps we should all know a little more about what we're putting in and on our bodies.

We use ingredients we've deliberately chosen to do what natures says it will on the box. So, we often macerate our own plants. We infuse and steep. We make tinctures and produce extracts. From that we formulate beneficial combinations of these natural ingredients and then make soaps, balms, serums, oils, creams and other products. All with the intention of keeping things as considered and uncomplicated as possible.

But there is something else behind it.

We'll never tell you that our products will magically cure everything from bunions to existential dread.

In fact, we're rather suspicious of anyone who does. And besides that we are not allowed to.

We don't make medical claims because we're not doctors and our products aren't medicines and they were never certified as such.

What we do believe in is giving people good information and letting them make informed choices about what nature is offering them.

It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

You don't have to reject conventional medicine to appreciate traditional approaches. You shouldn't throw your prescription heart meds into the nearest hedge and start boiling nettles. Although nettles are fascinating things.

And you also don't have to believe that every plant is secretly a pharmaceutical superhero waiting to happen either. (Tho' we have been guilty of trying to convince you that CBD in particular is truly remarkable - and there's more about that in our "You own a cannabis farm" blog!)

We've simply discovered that there is value in asking questions.

Could a better night's sleep help?

Have I drunk enough water?

Am I eating properly?

Could I change something about my routine?

Could something natural be useful?

Should I speak to a pharmacist?

Should I speak to a doctor?

Or, perhaps most importantly:

Is this actually something I need to worry about?

That last one is surprisingly powerful.

My childhood and mother taught me to respect medicine.

My partner taught me to question it.

And life has taught me that perhaps the sensible answer is neither blind faith nor dogged scepticism.

It's probably just curiosity.

Which brings me rather neatly back to the child I was in South Africa.

The kid covered in scratches, dirt and probably several substances that would have caused my mother to reach for the flame thrower…

…I survived.

Not because I avoided mum's medicine. I didn't.

And certainly not because nature always magically protected me. It didn't either.

I probably survived because our natural bodies are remarkably clever things and know what they need, and even though medicine is remarkably clever too, somewhere between the two is a huge, fascinating world that deals with how and why our bodies have evolved the way they have - existing in the palm of nature (for lets say the last 6 million years at least)….and that’s worth exploring.

That's really what KKOL is about. This existing relationship with nature.

Not simply replacing the daily products we use

Not pretending nature has all the answers.

Just taking a breath, looking at what's in front of us and asking the slightly derailing question before reaching for the big pharma pills or commercial beauty products:

“Is there another way....a better way?”

And sometimes, as I've discovered...the answer is yes.

Ngiyabonga Kakhulu

J

PS - Oh and if you have actually fallen off a roof, we'll happily drive you to A&E.

We might be tree lickers….but we're not completely bloody stupid.

Disclaimer: 

The information shared in this blog is intended for general information and entertainment purposes only and represents our opinions, experiences and interpretations, based on our own research, publicly available information and, where applicable, AI-assisted research and content development. It should not be taken as medical, legal or professional advice, nor as established medical or scientific fact. Always do your own research and consult a suitably qualified professional where appropriate.

In other words, we’re sharing what we’ve found and what we think — not handing down the Ten Commandments of Health.