OK I found the answer in yet another Google search, right after I gave up and posted here - turns out in order to import dynamically linked modules, one has to pass -E argument to the linker.
Exception exceptions.ImportError: '/usr/lib/python2.4/lib-dynload/timemodule.so: undefined symbol: PyModule_AddObject' in 'garbage collection' ignoredFatal Python error: unexpected exception during garbage collection Aborted
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