Thy Python module is a fairly simple wrapper over the C functions provided by curses; if you're already familiar with curses programming in C, it's really easy to transfer that knowledge to Python. The biggest difference is that the Python interface makes things simpler, by merging different C functions such as addstr, mvaddstr, mvwaddstr, into a single addstr() method. You'll see this covered in more detail later.
This HOWTO is simply an introduction to writing text-mode programs with curses and Python. It doesn't attempt to be a complete guide to the curses API; for that, see the Python library guide's serction on ncurses, and the C manual pages for ncurses. It will, however, give you the basic ideas.