“We felt aban­doned.”

These were the tear­ful words of promi­nent busi­ness­man Dipin­der Manocha as he re­called the men­tal an­guish of his four-month strug­gle to re­turn home af­ter the bor­ders closed in March.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view at his Gulf View home yes­ter­day, Manocha, 66, said the ex­pe­ri­ence has left him bro­ken.

“Even to date, it is al­most three weeks, I can’t go to work. I am lost. I can’t find my­self. I just can’t re­late, is like I am numb. It is like a bad dream. It had changed me to see that I had to fight to come back home,” Manocha said.

Scared, lone­ly and un­sure of when he would re­turn home, Manocha said what kept him sane and gave him strength was the sup­port from oth­er strand­ed Trinida­di­ans.

In­dia-born Manocha left T&T on March 11 to vis­it his 90-year-old moth­er in In­dia but on March 21 he cut short his vis­it af­ter learn­ing T&T’s bor­ders were go­ing to be closed.

In a des­per­ate at­tempt to catch the last flight to Trinidad from Mi­a­mi, Manocha flew from Dehli to Sin­ga­pore and then Tokyo, but when he reached Los An­ge­les—the last stop be­fore Mi­a­mi—the flight was de­layed due to a COVID-19 scare. Hav­ing missed the flight, he checked in­to a ho­tel in Mi­a­mi and re­mained in self-iso­la­tion as a pre­cau­tion.

Alone in his ho­tel room, he be­gan to feel fright­ened as time passed with no word from the T&T gov­ern­ment on when he could re­turn home. He ap­plied to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for an ex­emp­tion four times but got no ac­knowl­edg­ment. He missed his fam­i­ly and would video chat with them but at one point he was thrown in­to an emo­tion­al state af­ter he one of his sons had to un­der­go an emer­gency by­pass surgery. He even­tu­al­ly linked up with oth­er strand­ed Trinida­di­ans on so­cial me­dia.

“We start­ed a group on Face­book, as­sist each oth­er emo­tion­al­ly, and when we were do­ing that it gave us com­fort that at least we were able to help each oth­er in this process. Then we were told that we need to ap­ply as a group be­cause group ap­pli­ca­tions could be done faster.”

Be­ing on that group, how­ev­er, al­so took an emo­tion­al toll on him be­cause peo­ple shared their sto­ries about hard­ships they were fac­ing.

Nicholas Ramcharitar speaks about the 147 days he spent outside of Trinidad during the COVID-19 lockdown.

RISHI RAGOONATH

Re­call­ing some of them, a weep­ing Manocha said, “It was heart-break­ing. A moth­er had to feed (her) ba­by sug­ar wa­ter. So the group got to­geth­er to send mon­ey to this woman.”

He re­called see­ing a Trinida­di­an cou­ple with a ba­by camp­ing out at the Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He said that fam­i­ly bought all their meals at a fast-food out­let at the air­port and used the wash­room fa­cil­i­ties.

It was that pain and suf­fer­ing that gave birth to a fa­ther and son

He and fel­low Trinida­di­an Nicholas Ram­char­i­tar, an oil and gas work­er whom he had nev­er met be­fore April, and five oth­er Trinida­di­ans, two of whom had stage four can­cer, would meet reg­u­lar­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od.

“And we start­ed to help each oth­er emo­tion­al­ly, so we would go for a roti, go for dou­bles and laugh and talk.”

Not­ing that oth­er Caribbean coun­tries were mak­ing arrange­ments for their na­tion­als to re­turn home, he said they could not un­der­stand why T&T was treat­ing them as out­casts.

He said he and the oth­er six Trinida­di­ans then made their way to An­tigua, where they were treat­ed with re­spect.

“We were treat­ed as if we were An­tiguans. We were wel­comed. We fol­lowed pro­to­cols with masks, sani­tise hands, it was more like self-quar­an­tine.”

Even­tu­al­ly, he said the two can­cer pa­tients and their spous­es got ex­emp­tions. Af­ter spend­ing al­most six weeks in An­tigua, Manocha said he was forced to take le­gal ac­tion.

With­in sev­en days he and the oth­er Tri­nis got ex­emp­tions to re­turn home. They ar­rived in Trinidad on Ju­ly 24 but the treat­ment met­ed out to them turned their hap­pi­ness in­to anger.

Sum­ming up his ex­pe­ri­ence at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port as in­hu­mane, he said, “We came through an emo­tion­al storm, men­tal fa­tigue, phys­i­cal­ly tired and we were treat­ed as if we were crim­i­nals.”

Ram­char­i­tar left the coun­try on Feb­ru­ary 26 to work for three weeks in Sau­di Ara­bia. On the day he was leav­ing to re­turn home, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment closed the air­port for two weeks and then T&T bor­ders were closed. He made his way to Flori­da and stayed with his cousin and con­nect­ed with oth­er Trinida­di­ans on so­cial me­dia ex­plor­ing av­enues to re­turn home. He said the harsh so­cial me­dia com­ments from fel­low Trinida­di­ans to the plight of strand­ed cit­i­zens were al­so heart-break­ing.

To­geth­er, Manocha and Ram­char­i­tar spent about $200,000 while strand­ed abroad. But they said many peo­ple still strand­ed don’t have any fi­nan­cial sup­port and are bare­ly sur­viv­ing. They called on the Gov­ern­ment to set up a repa­tri­a­tion hub for cit­i­zens and start bring­ing home 200 cit­i­zens every two weeks.

—Sascha Wil­son