Driving through the streets of Chisinau, you wouldn’t guess this is the capital of the poorest country in Europe. It takes several kilometers to fully understand just how poor the people are. The first signs of poverty are on the roadside. Even the modest fruit stands and flower stalls can find no customers.

Just ten or so kilometers from the border with the European Union, misery stares you in the face. Here people have to survive on less than 40 euros a month. In Susleni, a village of barely 3,000 people, at least five men have sold their kidneys for several thousand euros.
 

Mikhail Istrati is one of the victims of organ trafficking. A Western European man suffering from renal failure paid 100,000 euros for this young Moldovan's left kidney. The operation took place in Turkey. Istrati received 3,000 euros, with the rest split between the intermediary and the doctor.

Ten years later Istrati says he regrets having agreed to the deal. He says his health has suffered, he has no strength to work, and he tires from the slightest physical effort. Istrati spent the 3,000 euros in a few months and then went back to his village. Today he says he dreams of finding a job and having enough money to pay for his son’s education.

  
Here, like in the rest of Moldova, a quarter of the working-age population has emigrated. If he were offered a job, Istrati says he'd leave in a minute to go join his cousins who emigrated to Italy. In Moldova, 40 percent of families receive money from a relative who has emigrated. These transfers from émigrés represent a quarter of the country's annual budget

“They are in Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States,” explains a saleswoman whose daughter lives in New Orleans. Is there any hope today of making a good life staying in Moldova? “Perhaps, but only in the city,” says Istrati, “and then only if you are young and healthy.” Istrati is only 35, but feels old, is ill, and says he sees no light at the end of the tunnel.

  
Those under 35 years old no longer have hope and want to follow their parents abroad. “My mother works in Israel and my father in Moscow,” says a 21-year-old man. He can’t find work and is thinking of going to join his father in Russia. “You don’t need a visa to go to Russia”, he says. “It’s not expensive, but I’d like most of all to work in Europe." To go to Europe, you have to buy a visa that costs 4,000 euros on the black market: a small fortune for this young Moldovan.