A 71-year-old African man has been living in an isolated house surrounded by a 15-foot fence for over half a century because being close to women terrifies him.

Callitxe Nzamwita was only 16 when he decided that his fear of women was too much to bear. He couldn’t stand being around members of the opposite sex, let alone talk to them, so he built a wooden fence around his modest home and hasn’t stepped outside the property since. Instead of shunning him, the women of Nzamwita’s community have always looked after him, throwing all sorts of things like food and clothes into his locked yard. Although he never opens the door for them, he does use the things they give him.

“Strangely, even though he fears women, we are the ones who help him get food and some things he needs,” one woman told Afrimax. “When you try to help him, he doesn’t want us to come close or talk to him. Instead, we give him things by tossing them into his house, and then he comes and picks them up. He doesn’t let us get close to him, but he still takes what we offer from a distance.”

Although he was never actually diagnosed, Callitxe Nzamwita is believed to be suffering from gynophobia, a very rare condition described as a ‘morbid and irrational fear of women’.

 

“I don’t want women around me because they terrify me,” the 71-year-old virgin said. “I lock myself in here and have a fence around my house to ensure women will not come closer to me.”

Calixte’s story first made news headlines back in August, when African media company Afrimax posted a video on him, and it recently went viral. One thing that no media outlet seems to mention, however, is where the man is from, which seems a little odd.