But even from the bestguarded houses, word trickles out, servants talk.

Abuse trickles down from the top of the ladder to the bottom.

And this is something that we should really work on, which is Africa, which is just a few trickles, basically in South Africa and a few other urban cities.

And the way it works is that there's a pump at the bottom, which periodically sends some of this liquid nutrient solution up to the top, which then trickles down through plants' root systems that are suspended in clay pellets so there's no dirt involved.

Likewise, Chinese mastery over ultra small, cheap micro hydro dams, which can generate tiny amounts of electricity from mere trickles of water, appeals to power short, river rich Africans. Tens of thousands of micro hydro systems operate in China, and nearly none in Africa.

The image on the computer screen is shocking a man, lying on a hospital bed, his head bandaged, with long trickles of blood running from the top of his scalp. The man, now sitting next to me, explains with a bit of understatement, Of course I must continue to have faith in the Chinese legal system, although I must admit that this incident has somewhat dampened my optimism.