“Siddung pon h… gal,” the conductor said to a Bridgeport High School girl after scores of students rushed to his heavily tinted minibus from which lewd dancehall music blared at the school gate Friday. “A it bring yuh come yah! Wha, you fraid a h…? Yuh cyaan fraid a h… an’ a it bring yuh yah!”

The smiling girl immediately obeyed the directive and quickly got onto the lap of a schoolboy who was seated at the back of the small minibus. Soon, the entire bus was ‘lapping up’ (the practice of sitting in the lap of someone else, most times the opposite sex).

A Sunday Observer special investigation running over two weeks on various bus routes across the Corporate Area and St Catherine uncovered a daily orgy of loose behaviour laced with lewd recordings – mostly dancehall – among bus crews and schoolchildren.

In at least one bus on which this reporter travelled movies were being shown via a DVD player. However, because the students were sitting and gyrating in each other’s laps, I was unable to see what was being shown.

The heavily tinted minibuses offer more than just transportation, as the mostly unkempt conductors and the willing female students often get intimate despite the presence of other students. In some cases, the intimacy is between male and female students.

According to a fifth form student at the Jose Marti Technical High School, students are divided into groups.

“One set of students go there [school] for education, one set for sex and one for hype and boasting,” he said. But those exposed to sex are not necessarily having relationships with schoolboys.

“You find that just about 35 per cent of the girls who are having sex will do so with schoolboys,” he said. “They say they don’t want any schoolboy because schoolboy money finish at lunchtime. But what I don’t understand is that the man who don’t work and don’t have nothing can have all six, eight schoolgirls, like the driver and ‘ductor. Yet the girls don’t want to get involved with us.”

Two weeks ago, at the bus stop in downtown Kingston where you can board the buses that ply the route to Seaview Gardens, a most graphic conversation between four girls from Kingston Technical High School corroborated the statement made by the Jose Marti High boy.

“Who? Mi nuh deal wid schoolboy, ’cause schoolboy nuh have nothing,” said one in loud response to a comment made by her peer. “My boyfriend drive jeep. Last night mi go down a him yard and tek out one a him earring. A fi him earring this,” she said, showing her friend her new acquisition. “Mi nuh deh wid schoolboy.”

In fact, most of their conversation was based on sex – who was sleeping with whom, who was sucking on what, how much money they got from a man whose name they blurted out, and who took away whose man.

Over the two weeks, the F word flew from many students’ mouths with ease. This was particularly so among the girls.

The conversations among the boys were based mainly around which girls they wanted to get and various dancehall artistes, especially the Gully/Gaza feud between dancehall rivals Vybz Kartel and Mavado.

While this reporter did not observe sexual intercourse in the buses and taxis taken over the two weeks, there was definitely pornography in the blaring recordings, as well as the titillating behaviour of the student passengers.

When questioned aside, some students and conductors admitted to witnessing sexual acts in the packed vehicles.

“A pure tings happen – all sex and dem tings deh,” one conductor who works with the Bayside Transport Authority told the Sunday Observer. “I don’t do that still, but I have seen that for myself. I was standing at Central Village and I see a conductor on the back seat with a schoolgirl in his lap and him a work her. You could see that they were having sex, and the bus full of schoolchildren. But they don’t care; is like the norm for them nowadays.”

One male student in downtown Kingston put it this way: “Well, man a man, so if a girl siddung pon you and a wine up, naturally a man will ‘fly’, a just so the ting set, but is not like we having sex, nuh clothes nuh tek off.”

Children from various high schools admitted hearing about students having sex on the buses. However, they denied doing it themselves.

But according to the Bayside Transport Authority conductor, having sex with the schoolgirls carries a cost.

“A nuh every schoolgirl easy fi maintain,” he told the Sunday Observer. “You see how some of dem look? Dem haffi get dem money from the ‘ductor and driver dem, and dem a demand it to! Dem nah f… free! All Fridays, bare tings gwaan.”

A few days later we learnt that Fridays are known among the Corporate Area and St Catherine school population as “Dagarin’ Fridays”.

After trying unsuccessfully for two days to get onto one of what the schoolchildren refer to as ‘hype’ or ‘hot’ buses plying the downtown to Seaview route, I eventually managed to travel on one two Fridays ago. Ironically, the bus had the word ‘Dagarin’ splashed across the top of the front windscreen, and it was obviously very popular with the students. I also learnt later that other buses, even on the Portmore to Spanish Town route, went by that name.

Last Friday, I spent “Dagarin’ Friday” travelling a number of routes in St Catherine and Kingston. In addition to the minibuses, students were seen ‘lapping-up’ in taxis, increasing the passenger loads from the permitted five to 10.

A popular practice known as ‘spin’ was also observed. Essentially this involves students getting so caught up in activities on the buses that, instead of disembarking at their usual stop, they remain on the vehicles throughout other trips – sometimes up to three rotations.

On Day Six of our investigation, this reporter was the subject of suspicious stares from a conductor, his assistant and students sitting in laps when a bus on which I travelled from Cross Roads to Waterhouse got to its terminus. I had remained onboard after being informed by the conductor that this was the “final stop”, even though the bus was still packed with students who gave no indication that they were getting off.

After the bus left the terminus, I decided to get off at the second stop on the return journey, leaving the students still onboard. I took another bus back to Cross Roads.

Three days later in Eltham Park, students from Eltham High and Jonathan Grant High schools were observed being met by heavily tinted taxis which appear to carry only schoolchildren during peak hours.

I slipped into one of these cars behind a clutch of students from Jonathan Grant High and observed the familiarity between the driver and the female student occupying the front seat. Both took turns at whispering into each other’s ear, erupting in sporadic laughter and tender looks from time to time. She then had the freedom to be the music selector without asking permission. In this instance it was R&B.

“The students would be around the back feeling up each other, kissing up and doing what they want to do, the driver just love the excitement of the ting,” said one taxi driver. “You will have a one girl in the front that you can touch yes, but the real ting is among the students themselves.”

Asked specifically if the students have sex in the taxis, he said, “Well, all a that possible too, because some walk wid dem big towel.”