Field Trip to the Sugar Factory

During October the school took its first field trip of the new year to the only sugar factory in Rwanda. They process sugar cane into refined sugar. Here is one of the students reports on the experience:

Sugar Factory

One gloomy day my school and I went on a field trip to a sugar factory. After school when it came time to go, it was pouring rain. We ran to the cars and decided who went in each car. When we were all ready we went off on the road to Uganda. When we got to the incredibly big gate we found out that the manager was late. We waited and waited. Brick, Darby, Aren and I played Eye Spy. Then finally we got to go in.

When we all eagerly walked in we met the manager and he gave us a tour of the sugar factory. First we saw the humongous trucks with a load of sugar cane being emptied into a big container. It smelled horrible. Workers had big sticks with metal things on the end to bring the sugar cane onto a conveyer belt.

The sugar cane was split open to get the juice out. Then the machines mixed the pulp with water to get the last liquid out. These people didn’t waste anything; they took the pulp and burned it to make electricity and boil the juices.

The machines put the juice in to the big boilers to get the non-sugars out. When they had finished with all the boiling the sugar came out fine, but sticky. We all got to taste a bit. After, the machines spun the molasses out of the sugar to make sugar crystals. We also got to taste the sugar crystals. Then we went outside, and some people bought molasses, we took pictures to.

After everyone was ready, Some people and I went back to their non smelly houses. And some people stayed to look at chickens. When I got back me and Aren had a sleepover. I think the sugar factory was awesome.

The End