Kidney Trade

 

A revealing piece over at the Daily Trust tells stories of Nigerians traveling to countries like Malaysia to sell off their kidneys for $10,000, which amounts to the capital many of them need to lift themselves and their loved ones out of poverty. Excerpt:

Mike, also from Edo, sold his kidney in Malaysia and returned back to the country recently. Like Eghosa, he says he was paid $10, 000.00 for his kidney. He says he was left with no choice because it was either he sells one of his kidneys or sits down to watch two of his younger sisters who just graduated from a sewing school become prostitutes because they have no money to set themselves up. He now feels a sense of justification for his action even though he now worries that he is still young and at any time in the future his remaining kidney might not be able to serve him if he falls sick. Mike says there were a lot of people in the queue in Malaysia, most of them Nigerians, who have gone to sell their kidneys. Like him, those who took the risk needed money desperately to start something that will turn their lives around. Back in the country, he now thinks of a suitable business that will keep him out of the reach of poverty forever.

Above, insightful scene from Stephen Frears' 2002 sleeper hit about organ trading, Dirty Pretty Things, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou. Below, scholar Nils Gilman's 2009 lecture on the "Global Illicit Economy" or "Deviant Globalization" - @ 2:19 mins in, he lays out the global economics of illicit organ trading:

 

 

 

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Read a Kalamu ya Salaam short story about buying human organs.

SHORT STORY: ANYONE WHO HAS A HEART