A towering 15-foot fence has shielded Callitxe Nzamwita from the outside world for over the last five decades, not to keep anyone out but to keep his most nagging terror women at arm’s length. This Rwandan man made the astonishing decision when he reached 16 to live in reclusion from all contact with the opposite sex. His self-imposed exile, compelled by an overwhelming fear of women, known as gynophobia, has carved out an existence that is as heartbreaking as it is bewildering.
A Life Behind the Fence
In the verdant hills of Rwanda, the home of Nzamwita has been a fortress of loneliness. A fence he had built while in his teens separated him from the outside world physically and psychologically. Behind it, he leads a life independent of any direct human contact: fetching water, planting a small garden, and receiving acts of kindness here and there enough to keep him alive.
The most astonishing paradox?
It is the very women he fears who leave food and essentials near his fence, never allowing him to starve.
“I don’t want women around me because they terrify me,”
he once said, revealing the depth of a phobia that has imprisoned him for 55 years.
The Shadows of Gynophobia
Gynophobia, or the abnormal, irrational fear of women, is seldom suffered and is poorly understood. Not listed formally in the latest manual of mental disorders in its fifth edition, it usually takes the form of an undefined specific phobia. These will cause paralyzing anxiety among sufferers, chest tightness, sweating, or panic attacks in the very presence of women.
The roots of Nzamwita’s phobia are unclear, although experts say that such phobias usually have their roots in early traumatic experiences or pressures exerted through society. When 16, at an age when social development becomes crucial, Nzamwita made the extreme decision of isolating himself, and it is believed that some defining incident might have sparked his decision. Over the decades, this fear crystallized into a pattern of life.
The Paradox of Fear and Dependence
Irony runs right through Nzamwita’s narrative. But it is through his terror of women, which had kept him inside, where he has received sustenance from local women; quiet moments of food and supplies at the end of the property show community respect amidst the confusion. What this portrays in the context of people is immense: even in instances of fear and disconnection, humanity remains interdependent.
Fear of Women Through Time
Though the fear of Nzamwita can be considered an extraordinary case, history and mythology are rife with the echoes of similar phobias. According to Freudian theory, anxieties about female power and female sexuality have often been interpreted as the very roots of such phobias in men. That is well represented by some mythological beings, such as Kali, a Hindu goddess of destruction, or the sirens in Greek lore, which have become a common representation of a deep-seated fear of women as dangerous yet alluring.
Anthropologists have also observed gynophobic behaviors in cultural contexts, such as among some highland tribes of New Guinea, where men’s fear of women’s sexuality is expressed in strict separation practices. These examples all suggest that Nzamwita’s phobia, while extreme, taps into a broader cultural and historical tapestry.
The Price of Isolation
Without question, living in isolation for 55 years will have taken a heavy toll on Nzamwita. Studies reveal that long-term solitude threatens to induce depression, anxiety, and even cognitive decline. On the other hand, social isolation presents specific physical health risks: vulnerability to infection, cardiovascular diseases, and even early mortality. In Nzamwita’s case, the psychological consequence of his phobia would be much more than living in loneliness every day.
Fear and Humanity
A Reflection What is it that drove one to live like that? Does fear so strongly prevail at the helm in the lifetime? Nzamwita’s tale presses for the acknowledgment of limits to which character and disposition of people go to their behaviors and resolute responses. As much as his phobia may lead him into a life most people think could only be fanciful, there is a real display of strength the community and compassion do stand to muster for one so starkly different from themselves.
In his small, walled-off world, Callitxe Nzamwita has found a fragile peace, but his story leaves us with one haunting question: how much do we lose when fear becomes the architect of our lives?
