Carole Munene – Episode 1

Episode Description:

In this immersive debut episode of Beyond the Path, we meet Carole Munene, a former fashion (bridal) designer whose career took a dramatic turn during the COVID-19 lockdown. What began with a scrap of green fabric became the spark for a bold new chapter, transforming her into a mixed media artist.

Join tour guide as she guides you through Carole’s inspiring career reinvention, from childhood art projects and a detour into fashion, to finding healing and purpose through craft.

This episode is perfect for:

• Listeners navigating career pivots
• Creatives seeking inspiration
• Anyone who believes in second acts

Script/Transcription

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

It was April 2020, the world had stopped. No more weddings, no more fittings, no more brides walking into her studio. Harold’s life as she knew it was silent.

But on a quiet afternoon in the middle of lockdown, she opened a drawer and pulled out a scrap of green fabric left over from a gown she had once made for a bride. That moment, she didn’t just cut cloth, she cut into a new chapter of her life. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

One day after trying and trying and trying, me, learning and giving up maybe for a week, another week, I decided to try it one more time and voila, oh boy did I make a bowl. I still remember the color, it was green.

Why was it green? Because the fabric that I used was green. It was amazing

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

She cut, folded, glued. Not to save a business, but to save herself from stillness.

And what emerged was a bowl. Green, simple, imperfect, but it sparked something. Something she hadn’t felt in years. 

[Podcast Jingle]
You are about to embark on a journey beyond the path. Where we teleport you into the lives of incredible women from around the world and uncover the moments that shaped who they are today. I’m Njoki Munene, your tour guide as we explore the beauty hidden in life’s unexpected turns. Because every path has its detours, and that, my friends, is where the magic begins.

🎙️ Njoki (Narrator):

Back then, she didn’t know she’d grow into a woman who crafts bold sculptural pieces. But there was something about the way young Carl saw the world. Through texture, color, and unfiltered joy. She wasn’t chasing grades or titles. She was chasing wonder.

And she found it, of all places, in art class at St George’s High School. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

We had a really, really fun, childhood,  me and my brothers.

School was interesting too, St. George’s was fun, the games were fun. I really enjoyed it when I look back at what we have now and what we had then. Oh man, you can’t compare. So I think my personality was very playful and never serious. The things I enjoyed about school was never at all about the sciences, always about the arts. That’s why I really loved school, arts was my thing. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

While her classmates built projects, Carol built a story, a paper mache peacock with bold blues and vibrant greens. It wasn’t perfect, but it was hers, and without knowing it, she had just created her first sculpture. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I remember we were paired, and we were supposed to make… I can’t remember very well, but it was supposed to be an examinable piece in the art class. And we had to come up with Something that would really catch the teacher’s eye.

And we came up with this peacock, which we used paper mache. And man, that thing had color! I remember the greens and the blues and the whole process of doing that thing really excited me. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

What she forgot to mention is that it was a 3D peacock, built by a girl who didn’t yet know what 3D design was. A project judged by marks, but remembered for magic. It was the earliest trace of an artist in the making.

🎙️ Njoki (Narrator):

And despite this, Carole thought she had a plan, hotel school, polished floors, table settings, neatly folded napkins, and meeting new people. But Destiny, it turns out, had other plans. And they came in the form of a firm father and a design college she quite frankly did not ask for. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

When I did tell my dad that I would like to go to the hotel industry, I think even he wondered how, I guess when he looks back at what I’ve done or where I’ve excelled, it always was on the arts and crafts. So he said, no, no, no, you will go to Evelyn’s College of Design!

I hated it though, I hated it the first year because I was like, oh gosh, I should have just gone to the hotel. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

But even in rebellion, creativity has a way of finding you. And by her second year, she was knee-deep in crafts work, drafting, designing, and realizing she was exactly where she needed to be. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

But then, I think in the second year, you had no choice but to excel because there’s a lot of crafts, a lot of your work being viewed. You had to do the crafting, the drafting was a lot, the artwork, the crafts work.

You see again, I’m back there. You could say the journey from primary all the way to high school to my college life was just about the art, the creative side. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

She graduated and went on to build a bridal business from the ground up, 25 years of gowns, fitting, catwalks, selling her gowns straight off the runway. She made dreams tangible for hundreds of brides.

But eventually, something inside her went quiet. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I run with it for a long time and I did, I did, it was amazing. I did a lot of shows and stuff and it was nice but then after so many years because I think I did it for more than 25 years I started feeling I don’t want to do it anymore.

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

When COVID shut the world down, Carol didn’t just lose her business. She lost her rhythm. For the first time in decades, there were no fittings, no clients, no deadlines. Just time. Time and space. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I don’t want to do it anymore. And that feeling was so strong by COVID. By the time COVID hit our country and we were on lockdown, I knew that was it. That was my call to take the bow. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

But the silence didn’t break her. It became her canvas.

She opened a drawer of leftover wedding fabric, material she wasn’t even sure she’d kept for a reason, and began again. Not with perfection, but with persistence. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I started researching on YouTube, trying to do what they’re saying you do. And YouTube wasn’t the way it is right now. YouTube has really evolved. You now get to see the step-by-step, but back then it was just almost like the end, the final part of the project or whatever they were building, that is what you saw. So that is where we were learning from.

And there were so, so many steps that we didn’t get to see. So there were lots of mistakes that were happening because I didn’t know how to glue it. I didn’t know how to bond it. I didn’t know how to do anything. I mean, it was so crazy. So many times I thought, now what is all this? And I was not good at the drawing part and that’s not the part that I wanted to get into. I wanted to get into the crafts part. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

But in those missteps, Carol rediscovered something ancient within herself. A maker’s spirit, a craftswoman’s resilience, and then, one day, a bowl. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

The fabric that I used on this on this craft that I was doing was from the materials that were left over from the wedding in line. I remember the wedding in line is something that I totally cut but I kept the materials and I kept the accessories because I wasn’t even sure whether I was actually saying this is it forever.

I was still holding on for just in case but when I started my crafts I decided it’s over and the material is what I’m going to use for my crafts. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

That green bowl wasn’t just a craft. It was a whisper from her future self saying, we’re not done yet.

And slowly, Carol began again. Not with a grand vision, but with scraps, vases, bowls, textured canvases. One piece at a time, a new identity took shape. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

So yeah, there I was with my bowl, my green bowl. And guess what? It was bought! Somebody thought, wow, what a creation. I thought, wow, that whole buying my product, my creation, my crafts, now opened my mind to making other crafty stuff that I could sell before all this time. 

And when I’m turning now, I learnt and we learnt, I was talking about two years. That’s how long it took me to do the craft and to be confident enough to sell, two years, probably even more, because I’m still learning, but it took the journey to start this whole thing because I am self-made, so to speak, in this crafty stuff that I’m doing.

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

And so began a new chapter in Carol’s career. Each vase, each bowl wasn’t just art, it was evidence. Proof that even after 25 years of bridal gowns, there was more inside her. Something that still had to come out.

And this time, it wasn’t about dressing others for their big day, it was about showing up for herself. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I’m so glad for COVID because it really taught me, we had time. I had time to try.

I tried a lot and thank God for YouTube. Anyway, so from that crafting of vases, I thought, why don’t I take some of this fabric and put it on canvas and see what comes up.

Remember after learning so much on YouTube, now I know how to bond, I know how to glue, I know how to mold and stuff like that.

It was amazing to do something on a canvas. I tell you, my work has evolved. The canvases are on another level!

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

And how amazing is that? I mean, what started off as a green bowl in lockdown has now bloomed into something much, much bigger. And she isn’t just crafting objects anymore. She’s shaping a vision, a legacy, one piece at a time.

And even in the process of understanding different materials and mediums, how amazing is that? Not only is she building a career, but she’s found her own form of therapy within her works. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

It’s just amazing what it makes me feel, what I feel when creating. Now, art is like therapy. So when I’m in those moments and I take there like maybe one week doing a piece of art, it’s therapeutic and I love it.

I love the feeling. I love what it makes me feel. I love it when I have people coming to look at my art and they feel, they’re pulled by my art and they’re talking about it. It’s just an amazing place where I’ve reached it so far, right? 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

And now she’s looking to scale up and I don’t mean her business. I mean the size of her sculptures. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I’m evolving, so whatever I am producing, I’m creating. It’s even surprising me.

So it’s something that I want to do, not in the immediate future but farther, I’d like to do architectural sculptures, the ones you find in front of buildings, momentous, when you monumentous, scultplus that just say, this is Carol’s work, internationally, take my work out there internationally. That’s what I want to do. That’s where I want to be. I want to be known all over the world for timeless pieces. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

I just love that she isn’t chasing applause she’s chasing impact she wants her pieces to echo through generations felt in the curves of stone and the textures of fabric the silence a sculpture can hold. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

My art is not for everybody and that is one thing I have come to learn, art is not for everybody.

Certain arts will talk to people, others won’t.

So I would like my pieces to be timeless, that those who buy, continue enjoying them for a long time because they still speak to them in different moments, different years, different times, they’re just amazing. 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

And just like her cheerful and bright, highly energetic personality, she imagines her work in homes filled with laughter, in galleries humming with quiet admiration, in open plaza’s where strangers stop and ask, who made that? 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

My piece is the designed feature in that room, as in when you enter, you’re like, oh gosh, what is that? Amazing! 

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

And trust me when I say, I have one of her art pieces in my house, and it’s always a conversation starter. So this is no longer a story about finding a path.

It’s about making one with her hands, making mistakes, her resilience. And we are proud to be the first people that she is telling this to. 

🎤 Carole (Guest Clip): 

I can, right now, say I’m a mixed media artist. Oh God, it felt so good to say that.

I really, really can say that right now. It’s taken me almost five years. I can actually say I’m a mixed media artist and I love my work. I love my work, but I love it when other people love my work because they do, they talk about it. 

It’s amazing what my work draws, what people feel when they look at my work and how they express what they’re feeling. I even look at them and I think, wow. Oh, wow. What a feeling, right? What a feeling. 

This is something I’m going to do for a while. This is something I’m going to do for a while because I really enjoy it.

🎙️ Njoki (Tour Guide/Narrator): 

Wow, what a beautiful ride. From paper pick-offs to green bowls and bold new beginnings, Carole’s story has been nothing short of magic. And this? This marks the beginning of a little tradition we’re starting here at Beyond the Path.

Five years from now, we’ll circle back, pop in on Carole, see where life and creativity have taken her, and maybe even ask, so what color was the next bowl?

 But before I go, I want to leave you with this question. What quiet moment in your life might be holding the spark for your next chapter? 

And that’s a wrap on episode one!

Thank you so much, traveler, for joining us on this adventure. We can’t wait for you to hear what’s coming next. And until then, keep walking, keep wondering, and remember, every path has its detours, and that’s where the magic begins.

Beyond the Path is produced by Outside the Kai, hosted and narrated by Njoki Munene, creative producer Carol Munene, story crafted with love and sound by our incredible creative team. A special thank you to Sandip Sura and Alayka Sam for their wisdom, encouragement, and the spark they brought to this journey. And to you, dear traveler, thank you for walking with us.

Podcast Outro:

If you loved this episode, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Share it with someone who needs a little inspiration today, and drop us a comment. We would love to hear your thoughts. Follow us on Beyond the Path podcast for all the behind the scenes fun and updates. Until next time, keep chasing your dreams and rewriting your path. See you soon. 

Guest Contacts: 

Name: Carole Munene

Email: allblackkenya@yahoo.com 

Credits

Produced by: Outside Akai

Co-Founder, Tour Guide & Chief Story Alchemist: Njoki Munene

Co-Founder, Creative Director & Sonic Sculptor: Carole Munene

Story crafted with love and sound by our incredible production team

Special Thanks to Sandeep Sura and Aleya Kassam, whose insight, belief, and creative magic have been instrumental to this journey.