Jean-Marie Appriou

Before settling down to family life, whilst on the cusp of her second trimester, she travelled the east coast of Africa in search of a great adventure – the kind of story that gets passed through generations of families with unrivalled, heartfelt attachment.

I don’t know exactly how it happened, but apparently it is fairly common practice over there. The urge starts in your pregnancy and can hold you for years – she kept the habit into her forties. I started to think of it as some sort of shamanic practice; I mean, there’s a history of us taking magic from the earth. But layers and layers of history demoted to a mouthful – surely it couldn’t have been good for a foetus to absorb so much. I asked her about it once.

It's a pleasant taste. It doesn't have a tangy flavour or a salty or sugary flavour. It's a bit like eating flour, and I simply cannot do without it. Even now, I awake from my sleep in an abrupt jolt, starving for a bite. I just have this urge to eat these stones.

James Lewis