Nicaragua's dark side OR the housewife with the university degree

During the last days I've been truly busy: I finished the analysis of the research I’ve been doing since I came to Nicaragua; I started the validation of those results (which means verifying if the people I interviewed agree with my conclusions) and I’ve been organising an event for 100 people which will take place next Thursday, exactly 20 hours before my flight departs.

But all this situations are peanuts compared to what I experienced this week, it was this year’s biggest disappointment: the wonderful picture I had of Nicaragua quickly vanished.
It all started at a Karaoke-bar in Estelí. It was the perfect night, I sang a norteña love-song (a norteña is a folksong from Mexico’s northwest and it's played in ¾, like a fast waltz; the common instruments are a guitar, an accordion and a bass, but if you get lucky you will also hear drums and a tuba).

Just after singing my first song, a guy in our group showed me his wife and told me how lucky he was to have such a good and beautiful woman as life-companion (the Latin-American concept of beauty often means to have pale skin and blond or blond-dyed hair). I agreed with him just to be nice, but I personally don’t think his wife is attractive at all.

The things got worst when he asked me if Austrian girls cooked well. I immediately knew where his conversation was heading to, and answered by telling him that in central Europe many educated couples (with higher education) had a simple, but useful housekeeping deal: the first to get home was the one cooking. This guy (who have just turned into a macho-beast to my eyes)laughed out loud at my comment and told me “Oscar, that shit doesn’t work down here, Nicaraguan women always cook, it doesn’t matter if they went to university or not, they all cook for their men and only party with their husbands. If their men don't want to go out with them during the weekend, they simply stay home...alone”.

He even tried to impress me by telling that sometimes he is physically harsh to his wife, but he made it clear that he “doesn’t punch her in the face”. He also told me Nicaraguan women liked oppression and he even tried to convince me that by being cruel with them, women could fell in love with you.

This was the worst conversation of my entire life. He later offered me to keep on partying at his place, but with his mistresses.

I quickly finished our conversation by asking him if he would like his own daughter to be hit by her husband; this stupid macho was of course not prepared to think about such a situation. I left immediately and sang my second song the Spanish hit “Colgando en tus manos”.

The following day I met a beautiful 19 year old girl who studies business administration but stays home during the weekends because her father doesn’t allow her to go out late (or even having a boyfriend). He says she has to finish University first. If this is not awkward enough, she irons his father’s clothes for the week every Sunday.

By thinking about this weird situation, I came to my own conclusions: her father wants a well prepared and responsible daughter, but what he may not know is that he’s making a housewife out of his daughter, but a housewife with a university degree on business administration.

P.S. These were only two isolated experiences I've had in Nicaragua and I truly hope this situations are not common among husband/wife fathers/daughters, but if it is, I sincerely hope this changes soon...