Writing 'C' structures out in cPickle format?

[Chance Ginger]

I have a problem that I am trying to solve. I have two different
systems - one written in C and another in Python. I would like the
two to exchange some information. 

On the Python side I decided to use cPickle. On the C side I would
write a library that can read the cPickle and generate the correct
C structure (the data is, more or less, self-describing) and visa
versa. 

I was wondering if anyone has done something like this before
and if so can they point me to information on how to easily do it?
The structures I am using on the C side are pretty simple (very
flat and using only integers and strings).