Funja-shon

Funja-shon: An Untranslatable Word

by Anthony Mitchell

I recently encountered something interesting on my travels through Palaisenja, the “Big Island” of the Archipelago.  As I was preparing to head into the interior of the island, in order to see how the lives of those who lived at a distance from the sea varied from those who lived beside it everyday.  Shoi, one of my guides, decided to accompany me to a small village about 50 miles inland, where we set up camp and I began surveying the surroundings and local environment.  The village was called Thirinadep, and was about half-way up a small mountain towards the center of the island.  Most of the people in the village of 300 are simple farmers.

Returning to camp later that night, we began to prepare dinner and Shoi and I began to converse.  He mentioned that he enjoyed travelling all around the archipelago, but usually did not venture so far inland since he couldn’t “funja-shon”, a habit he said contributed much to his well-being.  I had never yet heard this word, and asked him to explain it to me.  It’s literal translation is “ocean-sleep”, but its true meaning is to fall asleep while listening to the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore.  Given how closely most Oktip live to the sea, it would seem that most of them do this quite frequently.

Going about our business the next day, I began to interview the locals about their habits and customs, and I was very interested in what had brought these Oktip to live so far from that which constituted such a large part of their culture, and which most Oktip would never dispense with.  Most of those who I interviewed had lived in Thirinadep for many generations, and had never known any other life.  In fact, of the multi-generational residents of the village, all but a few had never even seen the ocean, which I thought to be strange even on the “Big Island” of Palaisenja, which could be fairly easily traversed with a week of purposeful walking, but upon further reflection I realized that traveling for pleasure, in the same sense as our “vacations”, is not a widespread idea among the Oktip, and many people in this village would hardly be able to afford to leave their farms and flocks unattended long enough to travel to the sea and back.

Of those that had lived elsewhere before coming to Thirinadep, they had been brought there for sundry reasons.  Several had come from neighboring villages, and some had begun relationships with a Thirinadepian while attending one of the guild schools and had decided to follow them back and make a life in the tiny village.  Only about ten people had left the sea to come live there.  When I asked them what they most missed about living near the sea, all ten of them mentioned not being able to “funja-shon”!  I was quite struck by this, since I had only ever heard of this word the night before.  I think that it demonstrates perfectly the Oktip peoples bond with the sea, even after moving so far away from it.