Rico enjoys school and studies hard because he wants to be the first one in his family to graduate. His favorite subjects in school are mathematics and physical education. He loves to play with toy guns and hopes to become a policeman in the future. He lives in a small house made of palm leaves and a thatched roof with his parents, four brothers and two sisters.

Rico is fortunate to be in relatively good health, but there is a general lack of access to safe cleaning water, which increases his risk to water-borne diseases. Also, it takes at least an hour to get to the nearest hospital, which makes it almost impossible to get emergency medical care.