I had originally intended to buy an entire moisture vaporator while I was visiting Tunisia. I knew vaporators were big, but I didn't realize how freakin' big they were until I saw one in person. A complete moisture vaporator is over ten feet tall and consists of huge parts that are difficult to fit in an overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you. Not only that, they weigh a ton!

So, I opted for a small cylinder from a moisture vaporator. I noticed from the Mos Espa photos that there are indeed some smaller cylinders, but I didn't see these anywhere in sight on my visit. I pointed out to some villagers that I was looking for this particular small piece, so this one guy leads me to the back of his house. We went around back and into his chicken coop. Inside the coop, I see moisture vaporator columns with chickens all over them. I picked out the one I wanted (pictured above), and we moved some roosters and pieces of wood out of the way, so I could pull out my moisture vaporator piece.

You can see in this photo above where this vaporator column fits into the grand scheme of things. It doesn't seem so terribly big compared to the other pieces, but even this piece is quite huge.

Moisture vaporator columns are made from scratch out of wood and then painted "Tatooine brown". They are also very difficult to explain to customs agents who aren't even familiar with binary load lifters.

This small wooden prop is a valve from one of the larger moisture vaporators. Like many of the other Tatooine props, it consists of a piece of wood with a coat of brown paint.

Now the tricky part...trying to locate these on film. I circled the area around the moisture vaporator where these valves stick out diagonally. When Episode I comes out next year and the camera pans by the vaporator and you see that valve stick out for a millisecond...remember you saw it here first.

I love this piece because it's part of a funky moisture vaporator design that is a primitive version of the vaporators seen in Episode IV. It appears to be some kind of vent or probe, and there are three of these on each of this type of vaporator.

Check out all this cool stuff on this "old" vaporator design. I found the piece above to be the most distinctive, but many of the other pieces were also spawled out over the Tunisia soil.