A Heist!

Banking in Yemen is pure absurdity. Along with most things in Yemen that should be fiercely regulated and standardized and just clearly aren’t, going to the bank is like stepping into a culvert of chaos. Open five days a week from 9-12 only? Isn’t every single person that has the monetary resources to use a bank in the first place, WORKING AT THAT TIME?
When you first walk up there are Kalashnikov bearing guards barring the door way- but don’t be alarmed! They aren’t even facing you, they are sitting down, they are chewing qat. Then you step across the threshold and all order goes to die. There aren’t lines, there aren’t stanchions with ropes or any semblance of demarcation. Everyone just forms a throng around the open windows, usually between five and ten people crushed together. And the bank teller helps everyone at once. He’ll take all the bank cards, do part of one transaction, switch to the next guy, make that dude over there sign some papers.. I find it completely ridiculous. I’ve been screwed time and again with my timidity towards forcibly asserting my queue position. There are many instances of cutsies where I just tap my foot and sigh audibly. Take that!
If you need to talk to anyone besides a teller the procedure is much the same- chaos. Each desk has two chairs in front of it, no, not facing the desk. For reasons unclear the chairs are facing each other. So if you have questions or an issue you go up and sit in one of the chairs to talk to the banker, and awkwardly swivel your torso/crain your neck around. The next person in “line” just comes up and sits in the other chair waiting to talk to the banker too. So you have two separate people, with separate issues, sitting FACING EACH OTHER, openly eavesdropping- in some cases actively participating in the transaction- but only one person is actually being helped. It’s super professional.

And it’s all just an incredible production. Just doing a simple balance inquiry involves passports, stamps, many flourishing signatures- from all counterparts, initialing this and that.. exhausting! I’ve been here almost six months and I STILL don’t have an ATM card. Okay Arab Bank, I’ll take the fall initially when all my stuff got stolen but that was four months ago- I have an active, functioning bank account, I withdraw money, I have direct deposit, why is it so seemingly impossible to get a debit card for this account?!? I described the chaos previously here. For whatever reason, at the Arab Bank (the preeminent bank in Yemen) everything takes six weeks. So I had them cancel the account/card that got stolen in Sana’a. They said I could get another card in six weeks- keep in mind my only available time to go to the bank is on Thursday mornings, a time when, more often than not, I’m doing extracurricular projects for Amideast all the way across Aden- which forces budgeting and financial awareness and saavy previously unknown to me. So many a week later I go back. Nope they don’t have it. Then they gave me a card without a passcode so it didn’t work… Finally, FINALLY last week they had it for me! They went through the whole ritual of dumping out a garbage sack full of ATM cards and pawing through them to find mine… classy.. So as she handed me my card, Mariam (who I now know quite well because of my previous banking fiasco and the incomprehensible amount of time and paperwork routine banking requires) looked worried and told me to go ask Abdullah if my card works. First of all, who on earth is Abdullah (the bank manager!) and how, if this is a new card, will he know if it works before I even try it. And more importantly why the hell wouldn’t it work?
So I sleuth out his office and explain the situation to him- please check if this ATM card works, I’m not sure why, Mariam asked me to ask you- which only took about twenty minutes. I was there for ages and ages and people kept coming in, looking at the computer, at me, shuffling in and out some more. Abdullah kept asking me when exactly I got that card. TWENTY SECONDS AGO! I literally walked ten feet across the lobby and sat down in your office. He asked me to go to the ATM machine- the only Arab Bank ATM machine in Aden conveniently located AT the Arab Bank- and try withdrawing a couple hundred dollars. This made me hesitate- I don’t like having cash on hand, when I have cash, I spend cash. For some reason physical money becomes FREE MONEY! With no consequences if I spend it all, no budget needed, time for treats and prizes! So living in a cash only society with limited banking options is difficult for me. Not wishing to be problematic, I acquiesced and tried out my card. The ATM instantly ate it. HELL AND DAMNATION, THAT TOOK FOUR MONTHS TO GET!
I went back in, Abdullah looked worried, he shuffled in and out of the office some more, I sat back down with a thinly veiled veneer of exasperation. We're just blowing through nap time, buddy.
This is what happened- somehow, in a mind-boggling maneuver, the Arab Bank managed to make me an ATM card attached to my original bank account. The defunct, entirely separate account that I canceled BACK IN APRIL. I don’t even understand how that can happen. There. Right there. That was the exact moment when I lost patience.

In case I’ve neglected to mention this in the past the largest monetary increment in Yemeni currency is 1,000 Riyals, the equivalent of $5.00. A cash-based culture- and I mean everything, cars, house down payments, hospital stays, college tuition, is paid in cash and the largest bill is $5.00? Absurdity ensues. People make transactions with BRICKS of cash, at the banks, stacks as tall as a person, garbage bags full.
One day I had the chance to observe the bank when I was waiting for a bus. An “Armored Truck” (Read: derelict, old van) pulled up just FULL of money. Some men got out and grabbed large sacks of money and went into the bank- they did not close up the van, they did not lock it, they did not station anyone outside of the van to watch over it. They repeated the process several times, refilling the vault with money. Is that not crazy?!?
So the big news the other day? The Arab Bank got ROBBED! Big men with guns, word on the street is that it was an inside job. 100 Million Riyals! Well that’s just nice. I wonder why the napping guards weren’t able to stop them in time?