The Secret Place

Hemani began with a longing, not a lack of options.

During a trying period in my life, I wanted to pause from all work and travel. I could have gone to a hotel and I appreciated the Airbnbs already present. But I wanted something more...something organic, intentional, and something rooted. I wanted a place to simply "be".

As a Christian woman. As an African woman.

I was learning to see life not only as it is lived now, but as it is meant to be lived in fullness ~ to hold the end in mind, and build from there.

Hemani was born from a personal search for peace: a space for quiet, reconnection, and remembering what matters. Shaped by my travels and the challenges I encountered along the way, I longed for a haven.

In the Christian tradition, there is the idea of the secret place ~ not hidden, but sacred. A place of restoration and dwelling. Hemani was formed with this understanding.

Every part of it was intentional: the openness, the restraint, the organic garden.

During its creation, I curated simple pieces to accompany the country cottage ~ candles, clothing, objects chosen to honor modesty, beauty, and presence. What would later become LR Tanzania began simply as an extension of care.

But it was during construction that something unexpected marked me deeply. Women from the village came for day-work, carrying their babies on their backs. I noticed only when I heard the crying. I asked that the babies be moved away from the heat and dust, and so they were brought into the unfinished Hemani tent. Resting in the cool on a mattress on the floor, coloring, drinking juice and water while their mothers labored nearby. They were the first guests of Hemani.

That moment revealed something I could not unsee, the weight rural African women carry, balancing work, motherhood, and dignity. Our grandmothers carried babies through fields and farms with quiet strength; yet here, in the heat and dust of a construction site, the same resilience collided with new risks, and I could not ignore it.

Hemani did not end at the cottage house. It became a foundation. A beginning. From it, new questions and responsibilities emerged, stories that will be told in time.

For now, it remains what it was designed to be: a country cottage, a quiet beginning, a sanctuary beneath African open skies ~ where the beauty of creation bears witness, and those who choose to dwell discover the nearness of God in The Secret Place.

This Is Hemani

Psalm19