What is being poor.. reflecting back on Paraguay

What is being poor exactly? I have an interesting conversation once with my neighbor in Paraguay. she told me she was happier when they did not have electricity and running water because now it is the norm and she has to struggle to pay for it. she told me that before the light and water came they were happier, they were fine. Now everything has changed. Now I have to pay for my daughters clothes and make sure they have a new outfit each year because if they dont their peers will make fun of them. In the past, no one had money like that for clothes. Everyone was the same. I talked to grandma (her mom) once she said they used to suffer a lot in the old days.. but this was from sickness and feeling helpless. it was more from how they were perceived in the community, their happiness was based off their family relationships and how the community saw them, than money. For me being poor has nothing to do with money, things, or the type of house you have. its access to empowerment and happiness and this is based off of the people around you. if you ask me, many people in America are “poor”. We have so many heart diseases, etc, makes one wonder... I came home after Paraguay to the suburbs where a community did not exist.. it felt impoverished. What is poverty? Should we challenge the conventional view on poverty? People argue accessibility to health care, schools, etc... but i can argue differently and use examples from the states... if we did not have television, would we interact with our families more?To notice our biases.. gosh i had them as well. i would walk into a “shack” and feel sorry for the family inside of it. i thought of cold nights, etc... it took me awhile to recognize how many people these children have around them to love them as they grew up. Grandma was always around her grandchildren... brothers could play with cousins, etc...their lives did not seem bad to me anymore... it took an adjustment. a hard and painful one to admit that i had...i wanted so badly to pick up a child that was playing in the dirt  with a broken toy, next to the chickens, and take him away to safe, clean, America where he would have clean toys and new toys... then i would look down and see the smile, and his brothers and sisters around him, smiling. He would end up being picked up by an older sibling or cousin and carried inside to be fed, changed, loved... it made me realize how sterile my lenses were coming from “a cleaner place”.... my soul could not even see the happiness in this family because the environment seemed “dirty” to me... i could not get past the chicken poop on the dirt floor, the dogs with fleas, or the buckets of “drinkable” water. It took so much effort for me to even open up to the idea that this family was a family like anywhere. It did not lack love, and was not “poor”. In fact, I was just feeling apart of my small world being challenged because it was different than what was comfortable in MY MIND.