The Michigan Daily - Saturday, June 18, 1983 - Page 3 African King visits campus on U.S. tour By KAREN TENSA Dressed in their colorful native garb, a Nigerian king and three of his chiefs toured the University campus yesterday. High Highness the Alaperu of Iperu Oba Kabiyesi and his en- tourage visited the School of Education, the biochemistry laboratories in C. C. Little, the CCRB, and the School of Public Health facilities on their trip to Ann Arbor, a part of a week-long stay in southeastern Michigan. THE ALAPERU is the ruler of his ethnic group in the town of Iperu, located approximately 50 miles from Lagos, the Nigerian capitol. He is touring the United States while on vacation. The reserved but polite king said he found Ann Arbor to be "clean, and very nice." He plans 'to stay in Michigan until tomorrow. The group stopped in Detroit to meet with black leaders, but came to Ann Arbor to visit Ebenezer Soyom- bo, a graduate student in the School of Public Health whose father Seriki Soyombo is one of the Alaperu's chiefs. SOYOMBO said he was very hap- py that his son is studying in the United States because colleges here have a wider choice of academic disciplines. Ebenezer Soyombo said he plans to return to Nigeria to use his skills to help the people in his homeland. Many Nigerian students study abroad because the colleges are older and more established in other countries, he said. The Alaperu and his party will meet today with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young for a conference on crime prevention at Cobo Hall. Earlier this week, they toured the Renaissance Center, Detroit City Hall, and the Detroit Zoo. Daily Photo by ELIZABETH SCC The Alaperu of Iperu Oba Kebiyesi, a Nigerian king, relaxes in his hotel room after a day of sight-seeing. The Alaperu and his entourage will be in the Ann Arbor area through the weekend. ANN ARBOR HOTELS BOOKED SOLID: Rooms filled for '84 graduation By MIKE WILKINSON Parents trying to find a hotel room near campus for graduation next year might be better off pitching a tent in the Diag. .Several campus hotels are booked solid during graduation weekend through 1985. Almost every hotel in Ann Arbor, including those off campus, will be full one month before commencement weekend. ON CAMPUS, the Campus Inn and Bell Tower hotels are completely full for next year's graduation weekend. The Michigan League's hotel will also post a "no vacancy" sign in 1984 since all 21 rooms are already reserved. The Campus Inn at Huron and State Street, which usually reserves 20 of its 205 rooms for parents of graduates, is booked for two years and has a lengthy waiting list, said Julie Ranspach, reservations manager at Campus Inn. The Bell Tower Hotel at 300 S. Thayer is traditionally booked months before graduation weekend, said General Manager Ron Breznicky. The 66 rooms in the Bell Tower are reserved for orchestra members who come to Ann Arbor for the annual May Festival, which coincides with commencement. THE BELL TOWER has a contract with May Festival organizers and Breznicky said he expects the arrangement to continue for several years. The Ann Arbor Inn on Fourth Avenue has only six rooms left for graduation weekend in 1984, said Chris Crane, office manager. The hotel reserves 40 of the 190 rooms for parents. Alumni groups that visit on graduation weekend fill the remaining 150 rooms, Crane said. THE 50TH anniversary of each University class takes place graduation weekend, bringing about 600 alumni to town who reserve blocks of rooms in local hotels. Rooms in the Michigan League are'all taken by alumni, said financial clerk Patricia Shemel. Off campus hotels such as the Hilton Briarwood Inn, expect to be turning people away in a few mon- ths. At the Hilton there are only-S0 open rooms which. should be gone by the end of August, said a hotel of- ficial. WEBER'S INN, located at 1-94 and Jackson Road, has open rooms, but an official said the hotel is usually full by January. Another reason for scarce hotel rooms is airlines which reserve rooms for crews during flight lay overs. But there is a simple solution according to local hotel officials: Book early. Reservations should be made at least eight months in advance, said the of- ficial at the Hilton. Hunger attacks U.S. children v By JAYNE HENDEL Starving children don't just live in the Third World - American children in poverty-stricken families also suffer from malnutrition, said the director of a national hunger-fighting group, yesterday. "Children are not growing and developing normally because families don't have money for food," said Nancy Amidei, director of the Food Research Action Coalition in Washington, D.C. One in four American children live in impoverished families, who are suf- fering because of federal budget cuts in social services, she said. AMIDEI spoke to more than 100 people in Rackham Amphitheater in the keynote address of a two day con- ference entitled, "The Impact of Pover- ty and Unemployment on Children and Families." The conference is sponsored by the University's Bush Program in Child Development and Social Policy. Amidei said that the problem of mal- nutrition begins even before children are born, as mothers with little money often cannot afford to eat the nutritious food they need in order to bear healthy children. To make matters worse, public health centers where mothers can receive prenatal care are turning people away if they don't have cash up- front to pay for appointments. In one case, a woman on the verge of delivering her baby was refused treat- ment, Amidei said. BUT WITH recent decreases in welfare, poverty stricken people don't have the cash to pay health care cen- ters, she said. Along with the lack of prenatal care, babies are fed diluted formula because the parents can't afford to give them more, Amidei said. This problem has received wide attention in Third World countries, but many American children suffer from the same practice. The lack of prenatal care and the poor nutrition after birth has resulted in a drastic increase in the country's infant mortality rate, especially in Michigan, Amadei said. This "failure to thrive" syndrome shows up in many infants from low income families, some . of whom are brought to hospitals when they are three or four months old weighing less than they did at birth. TREATING these babies costs hospitals an average of $1,000 a day, she said, in contrast to the $450 it would cost to provide preventative prenatal care in a health clinic. Lifetime in- stitutionalization for children who have irreversible problems due to poor care could cost the taxpayer $3 million, she said. Some families who can't afford to feed their children are now putting them up for adoption, Amidei said. "People don't want their children to go through the winter living in the car," she said.