ChickSpeak

We recently connected with an amazing Wellesley College senior, Chikoti Mibenge. While flipping through the pages of Glamour Magazine’s Most Inspirational College Women of 2006, in which she was featured, we were quick to note her brilliance and drive. It wasn’t until speaking with her, however, that we realized Chikoti is also model for optimism and strength in the face of adversity. Her voice over the phone radiates positive energy and, well… joy.

We wanted to find out more about her and see if she could help us pin-point the source of her happiness.

Her life before Wellesly sounds entirely too foreign to many of us, as she’s orignially from Africa and lost both of her parents to AIDS as a teenager. Her father succumbed to the disease earlier on, then her mother passed away only four months after Chikoti graduated from high school. Her youngest brother also has HIV, and Chikoti is determined to do something to help. Like many Africans, the family couldn’t afford treatment, so Chikoti is positioning herself to one day be a doctor, both to be able to provide all needed care for her brother and to contribute in greater ways to finding treatment and a cure for AIDs .

At Wellesley College, she is majoring in biological chemistry, and works as an intern at the Partners AIDS Research Center in Charlestown, Mass. Fighting AIDs is her life’s mission, and her goal is to work toward making AIDS drugs available to all Africans. While this might sound daunting to some, Chikoti seems surprisingly humble and down-to-earth.

“When people hear ‘Africa’, they think it is a hopeless place,” Chikoti commented. “By talking about my experience, I hope it will help show that there are ways of turning your situation around and making a change for the better. It is a choice. My goal in life is to have people change their way of thinking, even for just a brief moment. There is so much to be grateful for.”