[mod_python] mod_python several magnitudes slower than PHP on my installation?

Recently I've had to move my site to a new dedicated server running
FreeBSD 6.1. After installing apache 2.0.59, python 2.4.4 and
mod_python 3.3.1, I decided to bench a script in PHP vs one in Python.
I found out that for some reason, my mod_python was performing
extremely slow - magnitudes slower than it should. I scowered the
internet for hours and asked a few friends and still haven't been able
to find a solution to the problem.

from mod_python import apache

def handler(req):
  for i in xrange(1000):
    print >> req, "Yeah"
  return apache.OK

and...

<?
  for ($i = 0; $i < 1000; $i++)
    echo "Yeah\n" ;
?>

when I ran ab on both using 1000 requests and a concurrency of 10, i
got these results:

python- Requests per second:    21.37 [#/sec] (mean)
php- Requests per second:    1008.37 [#/sec] (mean)
Any ideas would really be appreciated... I'm on my last leg.
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