There is no place like home. That's the sen­ti­ment ex­pressed by Ster­ling How­ell, leader of the mu­sic band Xcite, who re­turned to Trinidad on Sat­ur­day night along with five oth­er mu­si­cians af­ter spend­ing the last few months off the coast of Bar­ba­dos aboard the Caribbean Princess.

"It is a re­fresh­ing feel­ing, we are so hap­py right now. I am speech­less with hap­pi­ness," How­ell told the Sun­day Guardian in a brief in­ter­view mo­ments af­ter ar­riv­ing by boat at the Cruise Ship Com­plex just be­fore 8 pm.

How­ell re­turned home with band mem­bers Es­ther Dy­er (fe­male vo­cal­ist), Rod­ney Har­ris (key­board), Shel­don George (bass play­er), Ron­dell Andy Ed­wards (drum­mer) and a so­lo pan­nist Vi­vian Williams who al­so worked on the cruise ship.

The group was processed at the Cruise Ship Com­plex and were dri­ven out of the fa­cil­i­ty at around 8:30 pm in­side a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty bus with a po­lice es­cort des­tined for Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' Debe Cam­pus.

They will be in quar­an­tine at that fa­cil­i­ty for the next 14 days.

How­ell ad­mit­ted it was one of the most dif­fi­cult pe­ri­ods of their lives. "It was emo­tion­al­ly drain­ing for us to see oth­er crew mem­bers have their coun­tries take them home, while we had to wait and hope. I think it al­so brought us spir­i­tu­al­ly clos­er and I want to thank those spir­i­tu­al lead­ers who kept in touch with us."

He said the group was up­beat and were ea­ger to see their fam­i­lies at the end of their quar­an­tine. "I sure­ly want to spend time with my fam­i­ly and eat some pelau and callaloo. And, off course, find time to go to church," he said.

The group had been con­tact­ed on Fri­day evening and no­ti­fied that they would be al­lowed to re­turn to T&T, hours af­ter Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young an­nounced that na­tion­als aboard cruise ships would be grant­ed ex­emp­tions to re­turn. The an­nounce­ment came one day af­ter T&T's last ac­tive COVID-19 case was cleared and dis­charged.

53 more na­tion­als who had been aboard cruise ships will ar­rive at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to­mor­row, ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day.

Min­istry of­fi­cials said they had been com­mu­ni­cat­ing with cruise ship com­pa­nies to make arrange­ments to re­turn na­tion­als.

The Min­istry said the re­turn­ing na­tion­als will be med­ical­ly as­sessed up­on ar­rival and will then be sub­ject­ed to quar­an­tine mea­sures.

Min­is­ter Young was said to be en­gaged in dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the re-en­try of 300 peo­ple who had been aboard var­i­ous cruise ships.

Along with the Xcite group, na­tion­als aboard the Dis­ney Fan­ta­sy and Roy­al Caribbean Cruis­es had been clam­our­ing for months to be al­lowed re-en­try in­to the coun­try.

The min­istry as­sured they are care­ful­ly man­ag­ing the re­turn of cit­i­zens so as to pre­serve the health and safe­ty of the in­ter­nal pop­u­la­tion as well as those ar­riv­ing in the coun­try.

Na­tion­als from Bar­ba­dos, Suri­nam and Guyana were al­so al­lowed en­try in­to Trinidad af­ter ex­emp­tions were made by Min­is­ter Young.