On the old pickup was written ‘Story, Ball, Color’. I met Esmail Azarinejad early in the morning in Dehdasht; a town in south west of Iran, surrounded by Zagros mountains located in Kohgilooye & Boyerahmad provience. Not very far are some remote rural villages. After breakfast, we went to the library that he has set up in Dehdasht. It was a surprise to me to see such a big and active library. We stayed there for two hours and meanwhile few parents and kids came by and borrowed books. I spent my time to select some science and astronomy books. Then we started to pack: water, microscope, telescopes, books, laptop etc, and I knew that most of them were from donations. Loading was done into the pickup and we started through the paved road. It took about two hours to reach Qaleh Raisi village and after the launch, another hour through the unpaved road to reach the Roodresh village.
The Pickup stopped at the beginning of the village, three in the afternoon, and Mr Azarinejad started to shout names of the kids: “Fereshte, Setare, Zohre, Moslem ..” . As soon as first one realized that Mr Azarinejad was there again, she called other kids of the village and soon a group of more than 15 kids came out of their houses to see what Mr Azarinejad has brought for them. It used to be books, but this time, it was a PhD candidate of Astronomy.
Mr Azarinejad asked them to bring a wide blanket so that we can sit on the ground. Two of them ran and brought blankets, and we sat in circle in the shadow of an oak tree. I asked: what do we see around? The earth, the sky, the clouds, the sun. Then I said: “we want to make a demo solar system with stones, can you collect stones?” Tens of stones were collected. We placed a big one in the middle of the blanket and I told them imagine that this is the sun. Then one of them brought a very small one. We placed it as Mercury and practiced its name. We kept a slightly bigger stone as the 2ndplanet: ‘Zohreh’ (Venus), and a girl was named Zohre, got proud of her name’s meaning. We continued to build up our stone model of the solar system.
The idea of playing a performance of the solar system crossed my mind and Mr Azarinejad liked it much. So we assigned a solar system body to each kid and told them what to do: the senior of them took the role of the sun: Standing in the middle of the field. Then one took the role of the mercury, one the venus, one the earth and a little kid as the earth’s moon, and so on. We practiced few times and the solar system performance got better and better. Mr Azarinejad recorded a video for the documentation and public engagement. The planets with moons were of special fun, with kids trying to manage both orbits.
After this, we sat on the blanket again, turning books. We were lucky to have one with pages full of colored images of the solar system bodies. Now they could connect the names, the stones and the roles to more realistic pictures from the solar system. Me aloud: “Now, this one is ‘Moshtari’ (Jupiter)”, asking and checking back with them: “Who was playing its role? Who were the Galilean moons? Jupiter is made out of dense gas and liquid. It is the largest planet of our solar system ...” . I was telling them and they were listening and asking questions with curious faces.
Next I wanted to change the topic: “We want to look at very small things under the microscope, who can collect some samples from the nature?” Soon we had our collection: oak branches, oak leaf, stones, goat poo and small other plants. Then I turned on the laptop and connected the microscope to that. Few of them said that they have seen a laptop before, and they knew that they can play games on it. I said it is more to that, it is also an important tool to do science, as our microscope now relies on a laptop to show us the image. The first thing we saw together was my small finger. It was astonishing for them, excitement developed and now they all wanted to put their fingers under the microscope. Luckily they all got the chance; finger tip and its difference from one to the other, different shapes of nails and nail polish. This took most of the time and we did not put large attention on the collected samples, they liked their finger tips most.
Mr Azarinejad came to us and asked who wants to borrow books, and many of the kids ran after him. The seniors stayed and helped me to move the materials back to the car. They had minutes to ask me questions and see who I am and what I do. At the pickup, each kid got the chance to borrow one or two books, there were plenty of different books for different ages and needs. Some were the astronomy and science books for kids, and others were story books.
Next village, Kelab, it took us in total about one and half hour to reach there. It was two hours before the sunset that we stopped in the pavement of the road and Mr Azarinejad called the teacher that he knew from this village. Then he went to the door of a house, they knew each other and Mr Azarinejad asked their kid to tell her friends and other kids of the village to come. The village had a kind of stepped layout, such that roof of one house was the yard of another one. We first had our blanket on the top of a roof, but it felt shaky for a big group and we found a new place in the surroundings of the village.
It was still before sunset and the moon was still not bright. There were many kids around, maybe 15, and almost 10 adults. I started to set the telescopes up and tune the finders of them. For this to happen, I was using the oak trees on top of the surrounding mountains as targets. Kids liked the view of the mountains and instantly a queue was formed behind the telescopes. One of the telescopes was a dobsonian with no tripod. It was lying down on the ground and fitted perfectly to the younger kids. They were trying to discover it, and I was giving them hints about operating it.
After a while, the moon got bright enough that we started to observe it. Both the kids as well as the parents liked it very much, they hardly wanted to leave the eyepiece. Fortunately with three telescopes observing simultaneously, the queues on each of them was not long. Meanwhile I talked about what they were looking at and directed their attentions to the different kind of surface features that were visible on the moon. They were patient observers, each looking at the moon for long enough time. Of course some were also trying to operate the telescopes through finderscopes, resulting in detuning the telescopes and I had to re-tune and align the optics for few times. Interestingly, there were two kids that only by watching me doing the process of alignment, grasped it well and later times they could even help to align the telescopes. Another kid, a very young one, he was very excited all throughout the event; he was talking to others and trying to compare the moon’s view through the three telescopes.
After 9 pm, the moon was going behind the hill, and we started to pack the telescopes, with kids helping us to move them to the pickup. One of the kids asked if I would come again next week, and I told myself: “I should be back to Germany by then.” After an hour of drive, Mr Azarinejad and I were back in Dehdasht.