Midnight. Stepping onto the ragged pavement outside a bar, I hissed at a passing taxi and it shuddered to a halt.

"I'm going to town. How much?" I asked the middle aged driver, who was wearing a worn white boubou and a blue wooly hat.

"Mil cinq cents," he said. "Is that OK?" He looked at me through the open passenger-side window.

"One thousand three hundred," I offered, knowing that with the change I had in my purse, that was the easiest amount.

Living in Senegal is tiring, and demanding. But when people ask me how it's tiring, I can't quite think of why. When you climb in a taxi in Dakar, not only do you have to bargain a price and deal with an irrate driver who knows you are rich from the colour of your skin and so assumes you are happy to pay more, but you must also instinctively know what's in your purse in the way of change. You don't have time to look and drivers may not have small notes or coins. If you end up at your destination and find out that you don't have the right money, then you just have to accept to pay more, or fight to pay less.

As the car rattled off along the dark road, he asked if I had the three hundred in change. He switched on a dim light so I could check, and I discovered that I was 10 francs (about one pence) off the right amount.

"No problem," he said sweetly. "Even if you were twenty five francs down, I'd let it go. I am tolerant." Switching the light off, he drove on.

We drove through the rough Medina neighbourhood, past girls sitting on the steps of a house while the boys made tea on a small charcoal burner, past fruit sellers with carts of plasticy apples and perfect plantation bananas. Everything seemed bright to me, shapes sharper, shadows more intriguing. Life feels intense again, and I feel more alive than I have in months. I have no idea why.