Ethiopian capital's home wreckers
BBC, UK - June 11, 2007
Twenty-four-year-old Osman Redwan woke up one morning to find his shack in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa, sliced in two.
City planners had drawn a line through his neighbourhood to make way for a huge road expansion programme.
And stunned onlookers watched as diggers came in to demolish everything along that line - one person's front porch, another's back garden, the front third of a traditional wooden house, half a shop.
The work was quick and clinical. Demolition teams stripped away plaster and partitions, leaving a series of bizarre cross sections behind them.
Walls were torn down, exposing bedrooms and pink-tiled bathrooms to the outside world, while families retreated into what was left of their houses ...