Our story
Fifteen years of getting slightly smaller rather than slightly bigger, told in five moments.
Fifteen years
How the house got here
Slowly, and mostly by refusing things. Five moments that changed what a week at Calm is.
2011
Four rooms behind the gardens
Adjoa Frimpong came back from eleven years in Chiang Mai, rented a house behind the Aburi botanical gardens and ran the first week for six people, four of whom were relatives.
2014
The ridge, and the first five rooms
Eleven acres on the Mampong road, bought with a loan the bank plainly regretted. The old house became the hall it still is, and the first five rooms went up along the escarpment.
2017
Ama plants the herb beds
The garden that now supplies the kitchen and the afternoon tea started as forty square metres of moringa and hibiscus, put in mostly to stop the slope washing away.
2019
The phone cabinet
After eight years of asking people politely, we built a box with nine numbered doors and started asking them at the gate instead. Bookings went up the following year.
2022
Nine rooms, and no more
The last four rooms finished, the sauna built, and a decision written into the accounts that the house stops here. We have turned down the money to go further twice since.
From the founder
I did not set out to build a retreat. I came home tired, and I wanted somewhere on this hill where being tired was allowed to be the whole reason you had come.
Everything since has been a version of that sentence, argued over with five people who now know the place better than I do. The rules that look strict from outside — the cabinet, the silence, the one menu — are all just ways of protecting the same idea from the very reasonable requests that would slowly dismantle it.
Adjoa Frimpong
Founder · on the ridge since 2011
Where we are
Fifteen years, counted
15
Years on the ridge
9400
Guests since 2011
9
Rooms, and no more
6
in 10
Come back within a year
Come and be still.
Nine rooms, six dates a year, and a gatehouse ninety minutes out of Accra. Write to us and we will tell you honestly which week is yours.