The glamour of inner strength

WELLESLEY -- Chikoti Mibenge's name means ``big whip" in her native Zambian tongue of Bemba.

It's somehow appropriate for this diminutive, 24-year-old dynamo with an enormous smile, who has dedicated her future to helping combat HIV and AIDS -- the illness that claimed the lives of both her parents while she was still a teenager.

The Wellesley College senior so impressed the editors of Glamour magazine that they named her one of its Top 10 College Women. Her photos and story are featured in the magazine's October issue, under the headline ``Brilliant, brave and under 25!" alongside students from such institutions as Yale, Emory, the University of Texas, and the Juilliard School.

Five years ago, Mibenge was sitting at a bedside in Kitwe, Zambia's second-largest city, helpless to do anything but hold her mother's hand as she slipped away.

Her father had died of AIDS two years earlier, his illness so shrouded in mystery that Mibenge didn't learn the truth -- that he had contracted the virus through another relationship and passed it to her mother -- until after his death.

``The illness has such a stigma at home, so many things are left unspoken, the last people anyone wants to tell are the kids," she said.

During her father's decline, Mibenge studied with a vengeance and stayed at the top of her high school class, scoring special honors in advanced math and French. She began learning English as a small child, and speaks gracefully, with a melodious accent.

``I was struggling with the emotions of losing my father during that time and I think I just turned to books. I thought, `My dad's not here anymore, my education is my path to anything I will have in life,' " she said.

Her mother's death then meant that her middle-class life, as she knew it, was over.

She, along with her younger sister, Chibuye, and younger brother Munsa, who contracted the HIV virus at birth, would have to live with relatives. An aunt suggested Mibenge abandon her hopes of a university degree and go to work as a clerk at local grocery store to help pay the bills.

``I spent too much time working so hard in school, I just could not do that," Mibenge recalled.

A United World Colleges scholarship to study in Trieste, Italy, came as a ``lifesaver," she said.

At age 19, two months after her mother's death, she left home for the first time, but not without great sorrow, and concern about her siblings.

``I was so worried for them, but I promised myself I would do everything I could to support them."

She spent the first six months in Italy crying most nights. (``Everyone else was calling home and talking to their parents," she recalled.) But she was befriended by a Swiss student, whose family treated her as a second daughter, with whom she spent holiday and special occasions.

``They made me feel like I could be part of family life, and loved as a daughter again," Mibenge said.

The university time in Italy gave her enough academic credit to be considered for a full scholarship to Wellesley.

When she arrived on campus -- her first time in the United States -- she was speechless. ``I told my English teacher in Italy, the campus is like the gardens in `Pride and Prejudice'!"

She enrolled in a class with Mary Allen, director of the college's biological chemistry program, and joined her laboratory as a research assistant studying how cyanobacteria -- a blue-green algae -- function.

Mibenge made an instant impact, Allen recalled.

``The first thing you notice about her is her smile and positive attitude. She sees the best in anything she approaches," she said. ``She's very bright and quick in terms of her approach and creativity."

Mibenge's work at the college lab led to an internship at the Partners AIDS Research Center, a Charlestown program searching for an AIDS vaccine. She spent this summer studying the impact of certain genetic components on the immune systems of AIDS patients, and hopes to write her senior thesis on her research there.

Although she's made many friends at Wellesley over the past three years -- while being interviewed by a reporter last week, a half-dozen students stopped to say hello and offer congratulations on the Glamour award -- Mibenge said she still can't help but feel like an outsider, someone who has seen and experienced too much grief.

This may be why she felt drawn to several of the school's Davis Scholars, a group of slightly older, nontraditional students, and was granted permission to live in their residence hall. ``I love it there," she said. ``I feel so comfortable with them."

She returned to Zambia for a visit for the first time in January, a joyous but stressful trip. Although in the United States she is just another struggling college student, her Zambian relatives consider her a head of household, and expect her to buy gifts and pay for group expenses when she visits. She was relieved to find her siblings thriving as they pursued their studies. Through her Boston health connections, she has arranged medical care for her 18-year-old brother.

After graduation in May, Mibenge hopes to work for a year as a researcher at a place like Children's Hospital Boston. Her ideal job would be working on HIV/AIDS education outreach for children and pregnant women in Africa. After that she'd like to attend medical school and go into practice, as well as have a family of her own.

A campus friend told her about the Glamour contest. Allen, her faculty adviser, and dean of admission Jennifer Desjarlais both wrote letters of recommendation for the award, which attracted more 700 applicants and came with a $2,000 cash prize. Past winners of the Glamour contest include Martha Stewart, actress JoBeth Williams, and Dallas Mayor Laura Miller. The last Wellesley College student to be chosen for the honor was a 1998 graduate, political activist Jocelyn Benson, college officials said.

Mibenge said she's reached a point in her life where she feels grateful for what she has, not bitter over what she has lost

``Now I think a fun evening is staying at home and watching a movie with friends. I have learned how to be happy with small things," she said. ``I know that my mission is to help other people, it's my calling in life."

Erica Noonan can be reached at enoonan@globe.com.