SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Joy and ela­tion on be­ing back in their home­land af­ter be­ing stuck at sea for months.

The sec­ond set of cruise ship em­ploy­ees, a group of 53, was al­lowed to re­turn to T&T yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The crew, who was on­board the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy cruise ship, was tak­en off the ship yes­ter­day morn­ing on two lifeboats and brought ashore. From the Cruise Ship Com­plex, they were tak­en di­rect­ly to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) Debe Cam­pus, where they will re­main in quar­an­tine for 14 days.

Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day spoke to Shaki­ra Long who worked as a quick ser­vice at­ten­dant in the food and bev­er­age ser­vice on the ship. Long had al­ready ar­rived at the UWI fa­cil­i­ty and spoke briefly about the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing stuck out at sea and on hear­ing the T&T bor­ders were closed.

“The jour­ney that we did with the repa­tri­a­tion from Or­lan­do com­ing down to this side here was hard. The on­ly two coun­tries that were giv­ing trou­ble was Ja­maica and Trinidad,” she said.

She said act­ing on ad­vice from the Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol in the US, the ship sent guests back to their home­lands on March 16.

What fol­lowed were weeks of un­cer­tain­ty as this coun­try’s bor­ders re­mained closed to stem the spread of the COVID-19 virus and flat­ten the curve.

Nu­mer­ous emails were sent to Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, beg­ging for the crew to be al­lowed to dis­em­bark. Over the last week, Young ap­peared to have a change of heart and agreed that Trinida­di­an crew mem­bers stuck on cruise ships would be al­lowed to re­turn home.

On Sat­ur­day, six crew mem­bers of the Caribbean Princess cruise ship were al­lowed to reen­ter the coun­try and were im­me­di­ate­ly tak­en to the UWI cam­pus for quar­an­tine. There are still over 300 Trinida­di­ans on an­oth­er cruise ship, the Roy­al Caribbean’s Vi­sions of the Seas. On Sun­day, Young said he was in con­tact with the own­ers of that ship, to ask them to an­chor in T&T wa­ters and quar­an­tine those na­tion­als on board the ship for 14 days. If the own­ers agree, those na­tion­als will be test­ed and mon­i­tored on board the ship and when their quar­an­tine is over, they will be al­lowed to go di­rect­ly home to their fam­i­lies.

Yes­ter­day, Long said the group on Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy was elat­ed when they learned they would be al­lowed back home.

Step­ping on Trinida­di­an soil brought an­oth­er wave of emo­tions, she said.

“It was kind of bit­ter­sweet be­cause we were leav­ing back our friends who had to go to oth­er coun­tries but all in all, every­body was ex­cit­ed to be home and to come home and be with our fam­i­lies. When we dis­em­bark­ing via the lifeboat, they had us in two groups and on­ly when we came on, when we ac­tu­al­ly stepped foot on land, it was a sigh of re­lief,” she said.

She said the fa­cil­i­ty at the UWI was “very nice” and each crew mem­ber was giv­en their own room.

“It’s noth­ing that we are not used to be­cause we are ac­cus­tomed to be­ing in our cab­ins, so every­one is just ex­cit­ed to be home.”

As for her, when asked what she is most ea­ger to do af­ter quar­an­tine, Long said, “I’m look­ing for­ward to fi­nal­ly get­ting some dou­bles!”