The Tam-Tam, which was used to communicate between villages of the people of the Abidjan region, had been confiscated in 1916 by the settlers.
Le Monde with AFP
The refurbishment of the French of the Djidji Ayokwe, the “speakerist” of the ebliés de Côte d’Ivoire, constitutes “a strongly historical gesture”, greeted, on Monday, October 11, the traditional chieftrobe of this people of the region of Abidjan.
“I am very happy to learn this news. We no longer expected a return from this tam-tam that was our speaker, our Facebook,” welcomed the AFP keyboard Aguego Mobio, current holder of the traditional power of Ebrié.
Friday, at the Africa-France summit held in Paris, the French President Emmanuel Macron announced the restitution at the end of October in Benin of 26 looted works in 1892, when the pug by the colonial troops of the colonial troops. Palace of Abomey, the historic capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey, as well as works that will be delivered to Côte d’Ivoire, including the Djidji Ayokwe, famous EBrier speaker drum, claimed by Abidjan.
This drum, which was used as a communication tool to transmit messages between different locations, had been confiscated by French settlers in 1916 and is currently kept at the Museum of the Quai-Branly, in Paris.
“Revaluing our people”
“We thank President Macron and wait for a favorable follow-up,” Mubio insisted, who announced the next outfit of a great ceremony to “inform the seven villages that constitute the ebrié people”. “This tammaker will remind our story,” he explains, and upgrade our people whose traces are disappearing with the wild urbanization of the agglomeration of Abidjan, which houses more than 5 million. inhabitants “.
Côte d’Ivoire officially requested at the end of 2018 in France the return of 148 works of art African. “The first object we are asking is the Djidji Ayokwe, the speaker drum of the Ebrié people had specified the director of the Côte d’Ivoire Civilization Museum, Silvie Memel Kassi. It is a symbolic object of great importance that was ripped during colonization. “
“The disappearance of the drum had destabilized a lot the social and traditional organization of Ebrié,” said Chief Mobio on Monday.