Blowing the house down: life on the frontline of extreme weather in the Gambia

A storm took the roof off Binta Bah's house before torrential rain destroyed her family's belongings, as poverty combines with the climate crisis to wreak havoc on Africa's smallest mainland country

The windstorm arrived in Jalambang late in the evening, when Binta Bah and her family were enjoying the evening cool outside. But when we first heard the wind, the kids started to run and go in the house," she says.

First they went in one room but the roof - a sheet of corrugated iron fixed only by a timbere pole - flew off. They ran into another but the roof soon went there too.