Damoure Zika, Nigerien documentary star, dies at 86

Damoure Zika, a fisherman's son from Niger who featured in many of the documentaries of prolific French film-maker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, died Monday, public television said. He was 85.

Zika, who was also famous in Niger for his weekly radio programmes on health, died in a Niamey hospital "following a long illness," the television said. He was married with four wives, 35 children and 80 grandchildren.

Rouch, a founder of cinema verite who died in a road accident in Niger five years ago, aged 86, met Zika in the 1940s along the banks of the River Niger, taught him to read and write, and in time put him in many of his 150 films.

First among them was "Battle of the Great River" in 1950, for which Rouch spent four months in a canoe to document the hippopotamus-hunting methods of the Sorko people who live along the River Niger.

As a doctor specialising in traditional medicine, Zika ran a clinic in Niamey, providing free care for the neediest.

"I have work to do; I don't have time to die," he once joked. "Even if death comes, Damoure will hide under a table and death will say: 'Where did that airhead go?'"

His funeral will be Tuesday in Niamey.