"Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out.That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself."

I pass by the train station every morning. The old brick building is only a couple hundred meters from Amasango's main gate. While it isn't decrepit like many of its neighbors, it has certainly seen better days. Usually, the station is quiet.

There are a couple ladies always selling fruit at its front door. I see them every morning. I also see dozens of people walk past it, pouring out of the township into town to begin the day's work. There's always movement around the station, but there's rarely anybody in it. Today was different though.

The activity and the energy that surrounds the station each morning poured over the invisible demarcation and the station itself was unusually alive. I could see through the open door and the windows a train parked on the tracks. The train was more than a dozen cars long and people were scurrying around from car to car--a most unusual site in Grahamstown at 7:30 a.m. The train curved half-way up along the track stretching toward the township.

This isn't just an ordinary train though. It's a movable medical center, it's treatment-on-the-tracks, it's doctors on wheels--call it what you may, it's some of the only medical treatment the poorest members of South African society get. In a country where millions of people still suffer from extreme poverty and don't have the means to get to, or pay for, the hospital; the hospital is brought to them.

It arrives, stays a day or two, helps potentially thousands of people and moves onto the next town.

It's certainly not ideal, but for the people who receive medical treatment on that train, the whistle announcing its arrival to Grahamstown is as good as it gets.

All aboard.