“With Breathe Life, My Dreams Come True.”

Playtime at Jamilah's (far left)

By age nine, Jamilah was already bilingual — she spoke Rohingya at home, and Burmese at the school near her small village outside of Maungdaw City. However, a new language was soon to capture her attention after one of her evening walks home. 

After an otherwise normal day at school, Jamilah returned to her village to find a group of foreigners accompanied by an out-of-town Rohingya woman. The team was sent by the World Food Program (WFP) to help develop water and sanitation systems throughout western Myanmar. Jamilah stared in awe as the Rohingya woman fluently translated between the languages and cultures, making introductions and explaining the foreigners' project proposal.

Jamilah was thrilled when the woman and another one of the WFP workers accepted her family’s invitation to stay with them. “Kaka,” Jamilah told the interpreter, “I want to be a translator like you.” 

“Okay,” the woman replied, “You can do that, but you have to do hard work. You have to practice.” 

She took the translator’s words to heart, and after a long, treacherous sea voyage to Malaysia with her family, she would finally have the opportunity to speak English — and practice she did. In the past 10 years, she has translated for multiple community development organizations and became the refugee learning center’s first English teacher for Rohingya students in their neighborhood. 

In 2021, all the Breathe Life translators lived on Penang State’s mainland, and Glyn desperately needed a female Rohingya translator for the island. “Jamilah became like my right hand,” Glyn said. Not long after she began assisting, Jamilah became passionate about the need for birthing assistance and child development education. She completed her international doula certification less than two years after she began working for Breathe Life. 

“That's my nature; I love to help people. However, in Malaysia, I also need a bit of financial help. So Glyn comes and helps me financially, and I can help my community… Working with Breathe Life is happiness for me.”

On top of being a part-time English and Math teacher and teaching two First 1000 Days classes for Breathe Life, Jamilah is on call 24/7 to help the moms through their labor, translate for the senior doulas, get moms to the hospital on time, and advocate for their well-being.

“In Malaysia, it's a bit scary in the hospital… especially for Rohingya,” echoing a concern Breathe Life hears from most of its mothers. Jamilah had already given birth to two healthy, beautiful daughters by the time she started working with Breathe Life, but she remembers what it felt like to start her family in a foreign culture and hostile medical system. 

“When I gave birth and during my pregnancy time, I was alone,” Jamilah recalled. “While you are in labor, you need somebody with you. If people are doing the classes, Breathe Life staff will be with them.” 

The moms report feeling alone for a variety of reasons. UNHCR documentation and official refugee status are hard to come by, putting many Rohingya at risk of lifelong detention. Fear of arrest, unfamiliarity with the language, and the grief of leaving home and family are all major factors as well.

It is not uncommon for women to travel to Malaysia for arranged marriages by themselves, and most who do so are between the ages of 14 and 18. In Myanmar, a network of female relatives around them to usher a pregnant mom through the birthing process, care for her until she has healed, and teach her to manage a newborn along the way. 

A natural consequence of genocide is that the cultural mechanism for raising the next healthy generation has been disrupted, which is why Jamilah works day and night to be mother, teacher, and voice for today’s Rohingya mothers. 

“I wanted to be a translator when I was only 9 years [old], so with Breathe Life, my dream comes true.”