Scuffles over the water pipe in Sierra Leone slum

By Katrina Manson

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Marie Bangura's six children are too busy selling water to go to school.

Aged 10 to 19, they spend what should be their school days wandering the 12,000-strong Mabella slum in Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, selling tiny plastic bags of water from bowls perched on their heads for 100 leones (4 U.S. cents) apiece.

"The people are not happy to pay, they abuse you and curse you," said Bangura, 42. "Sometimes they try to drive us away because they are so angered."

Dirty water kills about 4,000 children a day around the world, the U.N. World Health Organization says. More than 1 billion people a year have no access to clean water.

Here in Sierra Leone, which ranks bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index and where three out of four people live on the equivalent of less than $2 a day, more than a quarter of children die before their fifth birthday, often through avoidable water-related illnesses such as diarrhea.

Less than half the population has access to an improved water source, according to United Nations Human Development Reports from 2005 and 2006.

Mabella was once a busy natural harbor exporting charcoal to fuel French trains. Today, rusting corrugated iron and old emergency aid sheeting make do for roofs, held down with stones or tied with lengths of waste plastic.

Pigs wallow in filthy rivers, the stench of sewage hangs in the air and sandbags are at the ready in case of flooding.