France backs returning colonial-era 'talking drum' to I.Coast

The Djidji Ayokwe drum is a communication tool more than three metres (10 feet) long and weighing 430 kilogrammes (almost 950 pounds) that was once used to transmit messages between different areas, for example to warn others of a forced recruitment drive. France's lower house of parliament approved removing the artefact from the national museum collections to enable its return, after the upper-house Senate backed the move in April. The talking drum had been in the care of the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris.