“Every stone, every door, every window in this house has been paid with money from abroad,” says Gheorghe Sarivan. He looks around the house and is quiet. “And still it is not comparable with houses in Europe. We don’t even have a bathroom inside.”

Sarivan lives in Siscani a small village towards the border with Romania. The roads are in terrible condition. Some parts are so bad, people rather drive through the grass. Not that many people have a car. People walk, ride a bike or use their horse and cart.

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe, with an average income of about 100 euro a month. This is the main reason why a quarter of the Moldovan workforce is working abroad. For Siscani this is not different. In the village almost every family has at least one relative outside the country who sends back money to repair the house and pay for the kids school or university.

Better conditions

“The decision for me to leave the country was simple,” says Petrea Sacacol. “My daughter got married and became pregnant, but there were no job opportunities for her here.” This was ten years ago. He left the village with a little knowledge of Greek, but no job offer in the country. “I ended up as a caretaker for a rich family. I was lucky I guess. My job was to water the plants, do maintenance. Stuff like that.” Later his wife joined him to work for the family. In total he spent five and half years abroad, making together with his wife about 940 Euros a month.

For Gheorghe Sarivan the money was also the reason to leave the country. “You can not live with two kids from a double salary.” Both Gheorghe and his wife Maria are teachers. “You can earn a maximum of 4000 Lei (270 euros) a month. My wife earns now only half of it. So what can you do with that?” The salary is just enough to pay the electricity and phone bills. For food the family is dependent on their own fields and animals.

To improve the living conditions for his family Sarivan left the country. First he worked legally for a few years in the Czech Republic. And from the summer in 2006 till summer of 2008 illegally in Italy. There he didn’t make much money. “I could send maybe 40 euros a month, the rest I earned went to the people I took a loan from. It cost me 4500 euro to be smuggled to Italy.”

Kids without parents

At the local school the consequences of the migration are becoming visible. “This kid has a parent in Italy, her father is in Russia, this one in Portugal,” says Becca Whiteley while pointing towards them. Whiteley is a US Peace Corps volunteer who’s been working within the community for almost two years. “It is not uncommon for kids to be separated from their parents for a long time.” These kids grow up with their grandparents, relatives, or on their own.

Svetlana Miheil hasn’t seen her mother for three years “One day she told me she would go for work abroad,” says the now fourteen year-old. “She didn’t know for how long. And last year, my dad also left for Italy.” For the time being Svetlana lives with her twenty year old brother and his wife.

Every day Svetlana calls her mother. “I miss her so much,” she tells with tears in her eyes. “I miss the love. The possibility to talk with her about girl’s things.” She keeps on telling her mother how much she misses her, but she can not come back because she’s illegally in Italy. “Mom keeps telling me that everything will be better soon, that I just have to wait.”

Parental tragedy

The social consequences of migration are enormous. “These families are thrown apart,” says Ghenadie Cretu of the International Organisation of Migration in Chisinau. “Psychologically this is very hard for them. The lack of parental care has long term negative consequences on education, but also on emotional stability.”

For Gheorghe Sarivan leaving his kids was the hardest thing he ever did. “It’s a tragedy not to see your kids grow up. You miss their first steps, the things they do at school.” But if he had to choose, he would do it again. “As parents you have the power to give your kids a better life, but for that we need to go abroad.”

But because Gheorghe was not at home, the kids had to help in the every day life of the countryside. “My son Costel learned to bring in the cows,” say Maria Sarivan. Before and after school he had to work the fields, take care of the animals and so on. “They grew up fast, working like adults.”