[mod_python] Lifecycle of mod_python instances

Forgive me if this is more of an apache process question, but I 
couldn't find it covered clearly in the docs.

When apache boots up (on *NIX) its starts a bunch of children 
processes. Does each child have its own separate image of mod_python 
execution space that is totally separate from the other images?

That is, if I define a global var to measure hit counts in a script and 
then I see this var dance up and down as each of the child processes 
handles the request, do I infer correctly that there are separate 
python interpreters living inside of each child process?

If this is so, I'd be curious how people do global data structures in 
this model, i.e. a database connection pool.

Thanks,

Antonio