Remember Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood when we would sometimes get to see where things came from — the factories, the workers, the process behind the product, from crayons to fortune cookies?
That was exactly what the visit with micro-finance firm, Contactar, was for me: a glimpse into where a common good originates. From harvested sugar cane stalks, chopped and melted in a multi-tiered process that leaves caramel-colored round bricks of intense sweetness to be shipped out around the country.
(20 points if you can name the end product.)
The machine pressing the sugarcane stalks to extract its sweet juice
Cane juice coming out
Thicker and thicker and thicker still, from juice to something like caramel
Out of the furnace, pushing the sweet substance around
Ready to be packed and shipped out
The old man packing...
The discard from the pressed sugarcane stalks feeds the fire.
Out of the heat, ready to be stretched . . .
Pulling and stretching into . . .
Candy!
