Meet Chiamaka Offorjebe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chiamaka Offorjebe.

Chiamaka, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born in Anambra State, Nigeria specifically in a village called Oko, and relocated to the United States at the age of nine. My native language is Igbo, which I speak and read fluently. I learned basic English at my primary school in Nigeria, which really helped me during my transition years in the United States. Coming to the United States was a huge culture shock for me. The day I flew out of Nigeria was my first time seeing people who didn’t have the same skin tone as me. Up until this point, my knowledge of the world was strictly from Nollywood media.

At my age, I always imagined America to be this beautiful place with a bunch of white people speaking really fast English. I was extremely shy when I came to this country and was afraid of public speaking. My thick accent often caused my classmates to laugh and giggle at me. My bald head made people question my gender, and for this reason, my aunt decided to grow my hair out. Kids often asked me about cheetahs and tigers and was told on countless occasions to go back to Africa. To feel more inclusive and liked, I took an interest in sports. I ran track and field and played basketball all through middle school and high school. I wasn’t very good at basketball, but over time I began to understand the game a bit better and how to play it.

Excelling in sports stopped the other kids from bullying me and gained me, friends. I became more involved in the various communities around me such as the Igbo Catholic Community in San Jose where I joined their dance team and participated in church choirs. I became involved in the NAACP Youth Leadership Academy and even took on a leadership position. NAACP exposed me to the struggles of being a minority in this country, and this was the turning point in my life where I knew that I wanted to build a career based on helping people.

For my undergraduate studies, I went to UC Riverside and majored in Bioengineering. My decision to pursue this major came from an experience I had when I was little in Oko. When I was seven years old, I came down with a terrible fever. My mother and I traveled for five hours to visit a tribal doctor who practiced native spiritual healing. After the “treatment” which included a series of heavy slaps to the back, the tribal doctor showed my mother and I what looked like pencil lead that had “fallen” out of my body. These he said, were the viruses that were making me ill. As time passed, my condition worsened, and I was taken to a hospital in Lagos.

While the treatment was more modern, the hospital was not equipped with the latest medical equipment. After learning of my illness, a family member in the United States connected my doctors in Lagos with a U.S. physician to prescribe proper treatment. My life was saved because we had family in the U.S., but not all people living in remote villages have these connections. Also, there are a lot of tribal doctors and even medical doctors that will misdiagnose and exploit patients for the sake of money. Using my degree, I plan to establish an organization that outsources medical equipment and distributes first-aid kits to villages like mine in various parts of the world that lacks basic medical technologies to help their people.

For example, I want to make the first-aid kit that contains band-aids, thermometer, alcohol prep wipes, anti-malaria drugs, blood sugar checker, and etc. accessible to family households. So in a situation where a child might be suffering from a fever, at least the family has a thermometer to check their temperature and have an idea of what is happening.

In college, I discovered modeling and was signed to a modeling agency called Bounty LA last summer. My path with modeling was accidental. It began with a small birthday shoot I did, and from there, photographers reached out to me for collaborations and soon I was representing clothing brands like Obawear. Modeling helped me discover a new confidence in myself that I never knew I had and opened a lot of amazing doors for me.

When I first started modeling, I had a lot of my family friends children from the Bay Area come to me for advice. In my culture, it is frown upon and strongly rejected if you pursue a career path that is not towards being a doctor, a nurse, or a lawyer. I am very big on utilizing your talents and gifts and pursuing career paths that interest you. I believe not everyone is meant to be a doctor or a lawyer and that is okay. I don’t think anyone should be forced to pursue a career they have no interest in for the sake of money. Often times, you can convert your passion into a business, and that is currently what I am doing.

One of my proudest achievements was leading my Nigerian dance team to a 1st place prize of $2000 in a dance competition. Modeling and dancing introduced me to Downtown Los Angeles. LA is such a beautiful city, and I’ve grown both as a person and as a performer. I have made so many inspiring and hardworking friends, and I love how passionate and alive people are here. It is honestly the energy that pushes me to continue modeling, dancing, and being an engineer because anything is possible if you set your mind to it.

This coming June I will be working with the company PepsiCo, and I am really excited for this next path in my career. I am hoping to gain some insights on how to run a successful business and plan to apply those knowledge towards my own business.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Throughout this journey in the U.S., I’ve been blessed with such a supportive community.

Living in this country was not easy for me, and I experienced my own share of depression. There were nights when I was scared and uncertain about my future, and I would literally stay up crying and praying. My family weren’t always supportive of my decision to pursue bioengineering mainly because they wanted me to pursue nursing or a career in pharmacy. My third year in college, I had a professor try to convince me to change my major because he didn’t believe I had what it took to become an engineer.

This scared me because I really wanted to pursue this major and to have my parents not fully support me and a professor tell me I wasn’t good enough really had me questioning myself. But despite all this, what really got me through was my faith in God. Every time I found myself giving up and wanting to just settle, I would repeat my name several times out loud to myself. My name means God is beautiful and every time I reflect on my life and all the challenges and obstacles I faced, God was always there to make things better.

In 2017, I was in a terrible car accident where the car rolled off the freeway and rolled down a steep hill. I miraculously survived it, and even the police officers were amazed at how I was still alive. I was told if my right hand didn’t heal properly, I could lose mobility. But luckily my hand did heal. For me, my life goal is to inspire at least one soul in this world. I want my story, work, struggle, accomplishments, failures, fears, obstacles, and strength to motivate anyone who feels like this life is impossible.

I never thought I would be in the U.S., let alone be graduating with a degree in engineering while building my modeling and dance career all at the same time. So it hasn’t been a smooth road, but every struggle I encountered was a learning and a growing experience for me.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start all over again, I wouldn’t really change anything. Everything I have encountered all contributed to the woman I am today. I know what it feels like to be alone, bullied, laughed at, and even mocked for just being you. I can honestly say that I am more observant and attentive to the society we live in. There’s not enough love being shown in this world, and it’s shocking how dismissive we are of people who aren’t exactly like us.

My experience made me become very big on making people feel welcome, included, and wanting to create this community of love and uplifting rather than envy and hatred. At the age I was when I came to this country, I wish I had someone standup up for me. I was so shy and quiet that I allowed people to make me feel ashamed of my culture and my accent.

People made Africa sound like this charity disgusting place, and as badly as I wanted to defend my continent, my country, my culture, my language, and my identity, I was scared to. Yes, poverty exists, but there is beauty in my culture. And I used to hate watching those charity commercial ads that would have flies just resting on a kids face while they asked viewers to give monetary donations because it portrayed us as helpless dirty human beings.

However, I appreciated going through this because it made me appreciate other cultures as well and not be so quick to make a mockery of something that I have no knowledge about. I love my country and my culture so much, and I never want anyone ever to feel ashamed of where they are. I want everyone to be proud of their culture, and this is something I want to implement in my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://coffo001.wixsite.com/maryjane
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: Adaeze_maryjane

Image Credit:
Photographer: Kizito Ugo, Deandre Evans/Marjani Visions, LyVell Gipson/Obawear Clothin

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