The traditional way to cook large-crowd staples such as stews, rice, pap (cornmeal mush) and samp (cracked corn, which is usually mixed with sugar beans) at big events is in giant 3-legged cast-iron pots over a wood fire. Such cooking is not easy, as one must start and tend the fires, plus monitor and stir the pots. Then, once the food is cooked, one has to somehow wash those monstrously heavy pots, usually without the aid of hot running water. I wasn't involved with the outside pots at this event (Virginia requested that I prepare beef stroganoff inside the make-shift kitchen). However, I helped to cater a wedding at a later date, and ended up in charge of finding kindling for the fire and stirring the samp as I sunburned in the summer sun.
Other meat is grilled on the braai (barbecued); as in the U.S., that task seems the only cooking activity engaged in by men. Virginia and her husband Abiola purchased a whole cow for the lobola. There may also have been some chicken and I know there was goat stew(a tasty Nigerian delicacy). There was so much meat that many people ate their fill then carried home enough for the next day or two -- a sure sign of a successful event. Unfortunately, I don't think the eager crowd left much, if anything, for Virginia and her immediate family.
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