GHashTable questions

[Sam Tannous <stannous cisco com>]

(I think I'm missing something very basic here)
Why does g_hash_table_new have to be called from 
main (along with g_hash_table_insert) if one needs
to look up values in various other functions?

If I do the insertion in functions other then main, 
and do lookups in other functions, I get (nil).
This happens even though the hash table and the 
other variables are globally defined..

Thanks,
Sam