Bartering for Buddah
Jun 9, 2014, 09:20 AM
March/April 2005
Veteran recyclers Tom Mele and Bill Bailey have seen just about everything in the international scrap trade, but even they couldn’t have anticipated the Naxalites.
About once a year, their company—Connecticut Metal Industries Inc. (Monroe, Conn.)—ships 20 tons of copper scrap to the Dahal family, which lives and works in the Thamel section of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Last July, the company shipped a container to the Dahals and, as in the past, everything went as scheduled—until the Naxalites interfered.
A few days before Connecticut Metal was due to be paid, those Maoist rebels laid siege to Kathmandu. Business came to a halt. The banks were shut down. By all indications, Mele and Bailey were in for a long wait.
Just as they were getting resigned to their bad luck, an e-mail arrived from the Dahals, who bemoaned that they had a consignment of goods stuck at Kennedy Airport in New York. With their banks closed, they couldn’t transfer the customs fees, so the shipment was being held. They asked if Connecticut Metal would cover the duty, pick up the consignment, and deliver it cash-on-delivery to their customer in New Jersey. In exchange, Connecticut Metal could keep the customer’s payment, counting it toward what the Dahals owed for the original scrap shipment. “It sounded like a good plan, especially the part about us getting paid, so we agreed,” Mele recounts.
Later that week, Mele and Bailey borrowed an SUV, drove to Kennedy Airport, and cleared the consignment of six wooden crates through customs. As a final formality, the crates had to be scrutinized by drug-sniffing dogs. It was then Mele and Bailey realized they had never asked what, exactly, was in the consignment of goods. Before their imaginations could run too wild, the dogs completed their task, giving the shipment a clean sniff-report. So Mele and Bailey loaded up the mystery crates and headed out.
The man they sought, Sunil, was a Bangladeshi importer in Iselin, the center of New Jersey’s Asian community. He was understandably glad to see Mele and Bailey, and the three of them quickly unloaded the cargo and settled their affairs. By now, though, the two recyclers were beyond curious about why this small shipment was so valuable—so they asked.
Sunil chuckled. “What? You have no idea what you’ve just imported?” He grabbed a claw hammer and pried the lid off the largest crate. Beneath a few layers of Nepalese newspaper was a magnificent copper-and-gold Buddha. Mele and Bailey had known that the Dahals—their customer in Nepal—were metal casters but had no idea they were making such beautiful statuary from scrap.
“Not all their work is so elaborate,” explained Sunil. “This was a special order for a Cambodian temple in Connecticut.” The next crate he opened contained hundreds of small, intricate figurines of the Hindu god Ganesh, all of which were also made from Connecticut Metal’s scrap.
“Hey,” Sunil said, “are you going back to Connecticut?” Evidently, the monks at the Cambodian temple in Bridgeport, Conn., were anxious to get their Buddha. “Perhaps you could drop it off?” Inveterate traders, Mele and Bailey struck a deal, exchanging their SUV freight services for some of the statuary.
As the two recyclers drove to Bridgeport, they felt as content as the Buddha in the back seat—and why not? Their company had been paid for its original scrap shipment, they were doing a good deed for some Buddhist monks, and they gained another great story to share with their scrap colleagues. All in all, a good day’s work.
Veteran recyclers Tom Mele and Bill Bailey have seen just about everything in the international scrap trade, but even they couldn’t have anticipated the Naxalites.