From sneaking drugs to reserving matatus: Tricks teenagers use to sustain crazy lifestyle in school

As 45 high-school students from five schools were nabbed on a bus engaging in drug abuse and in sex orgies, the whole country was left in shock. How people in their teens from different schools could arrange for such a meeting, buy tobacco and weed and freely engage in sex was appalling.

Many wondered how the students in boarding school could access a bus that plies the Nairobi CBD route to pick them up from Central Kenya, a bus whose graffiti spoke loudly about what they were up to.

‘Why go to high school when u can go to school high?’ it read.

It was clear that they had it all planned out until the perfect storm.

As it turns out from our interviews with high school students, a lot goes on in school under teachers’ noses. For instance, how do students from different schools arrange to meet after school?

“We usually meet during school funkies such as club symposiums. We connect with the other students and we exchange phone contacts. It is at this time that they come with weed and tobacco. Since they are not students from our school, they are not frisked. They sneak in anything that we need,” reveals a student from a school in Western.

How do they sneak in phones?

She laughs: “That is very easy. We hide them in our inner wear. In fact most of the Form Fours have planned to come with phones when school reopens.”

Because of this, one school in Western abolished school funkies this past term.

Mary, a student from Central told Pulse that despite the recent outburst, these incidents have been going on for years now.

She adds that as far as the issue of mobile phones is concerned, many students sneak in phones by hiding them inside food stuffs like bread, a packet of biscuits, or a tin of powdered milk, while others chose to wrap them up inside toilet rolls or even in their private parts.

“This facilitates communication whenever we need to talk to our sources,” she reveals

A Form Four student from another school in the same county also revealed to Pulse that drug abuse is common amongst high-school students.

“Weed smoking is very common in schools. It is very common these days, I think the students have become obsessed with it. It has a lot to do with the songs they listen to. There are many songs these days that praise weed smoking,” he tells us.

Just as sneaking in phones is easy, *Delvin explains that sneaking weed and tobacco is child’s play

“We have our own suppliers who sell the drugs to us. It is not a difficult thing to get drugs. We put the weed and tobacco in our school books. The girls usually hide the components in empty glucose tins.

The teachers do not open these tins to see what is inside. When we get inside the school, we roll the weed and smoke,” he discloses.

High-school students, both in boarding and day schools, have always held a fascination for matatus.

Boarding the newest matatu on the road, with blaring speakers, is cool.

Day-school students take pride in boarding a matatu that strictly carries students in the morning and evenings.

“Old people demand that the volume be reduced. The matatus that are popular with students exceed the number of passengers, with some hanging at the door. They know the shortcuts to use to avoid traffic police.

The drivers tell us that they do not want us to be late and they will deal with the police after they drop us,’ says *Mary, a learner in Mombasa County.

The matatus usually drop the students at the schools’ gate. When a student alights from a popular matatu, they are the envy of the others, even if that student faces punishment for late-coming. Most of these students wake up early but wait for specific, hot matatus for close to an hour at the stage.

“These matatus are like school buses. The driver knows where their regular passengers are and even call us to say that they are waiting. They pick us up and drop us at our different schools, which are far from the main road. It is like a tour with the latest cool music.

That is why most of us are late,” she reveals.

Even as the fallout from the ill-fated minibus travelling to Karatina to Nairobi continues, matatu folks term the allegations as baseless and a ploy to finish them through bad press. They told Pulse that they are being victimised for a crime they are not part of, and scapegoated for s*** they have no control over.

According to Enock, a matatu tout plying route 44, the issue of drunkenness, drug abuse, hooliganism and immoral conduct among school students has been there for years, and is nothing new. His opinion is seconded by many other matatu drivers and conductors. Kevo, a matatu conductor plying the Lang’ata route, says the students always seem to have information about the latest nganyas (flashy matatus) and are always hunting for them.

He says that unlike daily customers, who pay the normal fare ranging between Sh30 to Sh100, students will pay double and sometimes triple the amount - just to ensure that they take these nganyas to and from school, especially during opening and closing days.

Deno, another matatu driver, reveals that there are occasions when such students send their fare in advance via mobile money, just to confirm their commitment, days before closing or opening of the schools.

“The fact that we are in business leaves us with no choice but to adhere to their pleas whenever they come calling. We have no power over students who are usually tenaciously loyal to their peers,” he says. Further, by the time some students board these matatus, they are usually high, something the matatu crews have no control over.

Some in the matatu industry have been accused of not only scouting for petite women; but also young school girls, who in turn easily fall for their flashy lifestyles, and life in fast lane - literally.

“Unlike before, schoolgirls hunt for us nowadays; this happens mostly with those who commute daily and at some point the bond becomes strong,” Kim, a Buruburu-bound minibus conductor recently admitted in an interview with a local weekly.

“Some of them fall for our dress code and money; with as little as Sh100 daily for lunch they will agree to anything, that’s how some of my friends found young ‘wives’ from well-off families within the city and its outskirts,” he added.

Another matatu tout, preferring only to be referred to as Kama, reveals how they ‘test’ if school or college girls will fall for their evil wiles: when boarding their noisy buses, they find out if the girl is ‘ripe’ by slyly touching her breasts with their elbows. With time some of them learn the cue. The conductor, who claims to pocket more than Sh3000 per day, said all money he spends on these girls is paid in kind.

In some matatus, the front seats are spared for young women and college girls, to keep the hot-blooded drivers company. Along the way contacts are exchanged and soon, more rubber than the vehicle’s will be meeting the ‘road’.

With the current rise of technology, teenagers have become addicted to social media as a means of communication.

“We all part of a Whatsapp group (a name I cannot disclose), where we communicate about everything, from sending details about how we will meet at school outings to sharing photos and lots of other information.” says Alice*, adding that the exchange usually happens when they meet at school funkies.

“We exchange phone numbers, letters and arrange times when we can chat, probably after preps,” she discloses.

Wangeci*, a student from a boarding school in Nairobi mentions that there is a rapid increase in ‘sexting’ with male students from other schools.

They routinely exchange nude photos, being careful enough to crop out the face, just in case the photos are leaked. This, she says, has pretty much become the norm among students.

The other way the students communicate is through the very same school computers that are supposed to keep them at par with a fast-rising ICT world, in those computer rooms. They access social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter

“Facebook is the most popular site as almost every student in our school has an account. It is here that we communicate with each other, especially boys from other schools and plan out everything for when we close school. After that, we erase the history from the web pages to get rid of any evidence,” says Wangeci.

It is with this technology that some students have even gone as far as purchasing drugs and alcohol that are sneaked inside the premises with the help of teachers and compromised school watchmen.